President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on his trade war and threatened to levy even higher tariffs on China this week, as markets endured a third day of intense volatility. “We've been ripped off and taken advantage of by many countries over the years, and can't do it anymore,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office on Monday. “We have many, ma Trump’s commitment to his tariffs comes amid mounting pressure from economists, investors, and even Republicans in Congress for the White House to pause a trade strategy many fear could drive a global recession. Last week, Trump imposed a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports, as well as additional tariffs on some 90 countries. On Sunday, Goldman Sachs said the probability of a recession in the next 12 months had jumped to 45%. “We have $36 trillion in debt. I want to get rid of it, and we can do it quickly with proper deals,” Trump said Monday. “Countries don't allow us to sell our product, but we allow them to sell their product…They charge us massive amounts of money for the privilege of going into their country. Those days are over.” The meeting marked the first time Trump met in-person with a foreign leader since he unveiled the sweeping new tariffs last week in a rambling and unclear announcement in which he described an opaque formula used to calculate higher tariff rates on adversaries and allies alike. The strategy drew puzzlement from economists, who quickly found errors and inconsistencies in how the administration calculated the new tariff rates. Some countries have attempted to quickly show they can address Trump’s unhappiness with the current trade status quo. During Monday’s press meeting, Netanyahu claimed he would work hard to “quickly” eliminate the trade deficit with the U.S.—though President Trump did not respond with a commitment to reduce the new 17% tariff on the country. “Don’t forget, we help Israel a lot,” Trump said in reference to the billions of aid the U.S. sends their closest Middle Eastern ally. Others have responded more firmly. China retaliated with a 34% tariff against American imports, which the President criticized during the press conference and on his social media platform. “If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump threatened on Truth Social Monday morning. Several business leaders have called on Trump to pause the implementation of his tariffs and impose a more predictable strategy to pressure more manufacturers to produce goods inside the U.S. Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager who has supported Trump, warned of a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter” if Trump doesn’t change course. “By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital,” Ackman wrote Sunday on X. Trump said he wasn't worried about driving trading partners to China, claiming that many countries have already approached him about negotiations. To some extent, Trump recognized that building up domestic manufacturing and bringing back jobs would take time.

Protesters across the U.S. came together on Saturday, April 5, for the nationwide “Hands Off!” protests, demonstrating resistance against the actions of President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) lead, Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The Trump Administration and Musk have notably spent the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency working to “reduce waste” through mass government layoffs and the termination of contracts. There has even been an attempt to dismantle the Department of Education. A child attending a protest in Atlanta was pictured holding a banner that read "Hands off my education."

The U.S. and global stock markets have been hit hard since President Donald Trump announced his latest tariffs on April 2. The so-called “Liberation Day” saw the introduction of blanket 10% tariffs on all imported goods, and additional import taxes placed on 60 other countries. In the worst week for U.S. stocks since the markets crashed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dow Jones closed on Friday 2,000 points down, the S&P Index plunged 6%, and Nasdaq dipped almost 6%. A 401(k) is an employer-sponsored retirement plan where a person has the option to make contributions that are deducted from their paycheck. In some cases, the company will match your contributions up to a certain percentage of your salary. The value of 401(k) accounts is closely tied to fluctuations in the stock markets, as the portfolio allows you to invest in assets which are directly tied to the market’s performance. As such, when the stock market fluctuates, so too does a 401(k). With a 401(k), you carry all the risk because the investment decisions are yours. With such extreme dips in the stock market, some Americans are seeing their retirement savings take an intense hit. During an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, April 6, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about the market turmoil and the concerns regarding retirement savings. Host Kristen Welker said: “More than 160 million Americans are invested in the market. Many of them have spent their lives saving for their retirement. What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and who've just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?” Responding to the question, Bessent remarked that he thinks it's a “false narrative,” and suggested that people maintain a “long-term view.” “Americans who want to retire right now, Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what's happening. And you know, in fact, most Americans don't have everything in the market,” said Bessent. “Most Americans in a 401(k) have what's called a '60/40 account.' 60/40 accounts are down 5 or 6% on the year. People have a long-term view. They have a program that the reason the stock market is considered a good investment is because it's a long-term investment. If you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it's very risky. Over the long term, it's a good investment.” Bessent's remarks mirror those made by Trump. On April 3, when aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked by a reporter about the rising concerns among Americans and whether he has checked his own 401(k) since his tariff announcements stunned the stock market. Trump said: “I haven’t checked my 401(k).” The President also doubled down on his belief that though the markets look bad now, his tariffs will ultimately be a good thing for the economy. “I think our markets are going to boom; we’ve got to give it a little chance,” he said. The President once again shared his optimism about the economy in an update he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday, April 5. “This is an economic revolution, and we will win. Hang tough, it won't be easy, but the end result will be historic. We will Make America Great Again,” he said. What do experts advise you should do about your 401(k)? Brad Clark, founder and CEO of Solomon Financial, says that this is not the time to panic and take your money out of savings. “It’s scary,” he admits, but the response to fear, in his professional opinion, is to stay the course—especially if you are a younger investor preparing for future retirement. “When you're flying somewhere and you're in the worst turbulence you've ever been in, all you can think is, ‘I've just got to get off this plane,’” says Clark. “But the plane was built to handle this. That's kind of like your portfolio.” For people two or three years from retirement, Clark says their portfolios should already be less risky, and they should not have full market exposure to their investments. However, for those who are still 10 or more years away from retirement, there could be positives to note. “What a great buying opportunity,” Clark argues. “This is how the Warren Buffetts of the world make money. Greedy when everyone else is fearful, and fearful when everyone else is greedy.” Clark’s advice to those people—who are a decade or more away from retirement— is to “continue to invest like you’ve always invested,” and he is confident that this will pay off in the long run. In a column for the Washington Post, personal finance columnist and author Michelle Singletary echoed this sentiment. “If you’re in your 20s, 30s, or early 40s, don’t let what’s happening now scare you away from the stock market. Keep investing,” she said. Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, takes a more cautious approach for people of all ages. He recommends not investing in anything risky now, instead starting back from a safe investment position and eventually building your investment portfolio back into something more risky. By starting conservatively and building up, Kotlikoff says that investors can save themselves from pain later on. “There’s no reason to believe that the market will reverse itself,” he says. “Leave only in the market what you can afford to lose and don’t spend outside of it.” He also recommends people consider doing what he and his wife did soon after Trump’s Inauguration Day. In preparation of potential market fluctuations, they built a TIPS ladder, which is a portfolio of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. TIPS are U.S. government bonds that adjust for inflation, ensuring that the bond’s principal increases with inflation and decreases with deflation. “It's a combination of spending and investing behavior that is called ‘upside investing’ that leads you just to have upside risks,” Kotlikoff says. “You're losing that downside because you're never spending out of anything that's risky, you’re just spending out of this TIPS ladder.” Fort echoes Kotlikoff’s caution, noting that while some economists are saying to stay the course as usual, these are not usual times, and she thinks that it is likely that the markets are only going to dip further. For her own mother, who relies on her 401k, Fort has reduced her exposure to the market as much as possible. “This is a fundamental shift in the world order,” Fort emphasizes once more. “If you are close to retirement age, you’ll want to look for the safest assets if you cannot afford another 20% to 30% decline in the market.” Overall, it's worth noting that expert advice varies depending on the age of the person with the 401(k) and what stage they're at in their working lives. For example, Fort did not take the same measures for her own financial portfolio as she did for her mother's, since she is younger and has more time until retirement. Across the board, expert guidance tells us not to panic and not to make any rash financial decisions.

On April 2, President Donald Trump held his long-promised “Liberation Day,” during which he took to the Rose Garden of the White House and announced a vast swath of tariffs that he will be implementing. Trump’s “Liberation Day” moves saw the introduction of a 10% tariff on all imported goods, and additional import taxes—of varying degrees—placed on 60 other countries. The U.S. and global markets have already started to feel the impact of Trump’s tariffs, with the U.S. stock market taking the worst hit thus far. At the end of Thursday, April 3, Dow Jones closed at 1,700 points lower. Plus, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes had their worst day since 2020. Thursday also ended with the U.S. dollar dipping to a six-month low against the EURO, falling along with U.S. bond yields. On Friday, April 4, morning reports showed that as of 10:30 a.m. ET, the S&P 500 index was down 193 points (3.58%). The Wall Street slump and global dip in stocks has sparked fresh fears in economists and concerns as to whether the U.S. is heading into a recession. However, in the midst of the market turmoil, a news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday showed a stronger-than-expected employment report, with 228,000 jobs created in March. Trump addressed the employment numbers in a Truth Social post on Friday morning, stating that the report was “far better than expected.” “It’s already working,” he wrote. “Hang tough, we can’t lose.” During an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, April 6, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about the market turmoil and said “there doesn't have to be a recession.” “We get these short-term market reactions from time to time. The market consistently underestimates Donald Trump,” Bessent said. “I remember that in 2016, the night President Trump won, the market crashed. And it turned out he was going to be the most pro-business president in over a century, maybe in the history of the country. And we went on to very high after-inflation returns for the next four years.” But Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat serving in California, expressed deep concerns from across the aisle during his own interview on the Sunday morning show. “I hope and pray we stay out of recession. But if we head into a recession, it will be the Trump recession. He will completely own it. This is a completely self-destructive economic act that he's engaged in,” Schiff said. “And it's not just the tariffs. It's also the freezing of funds, the firing of people, the alienation of our allies in California. I'm hearing from farmers who still haven't recovered market share from the tariffs during the first Trump administration. I'm hearing from people in the tourist industry. You have people from other countries now who don't want to come here, most particularly Canadians.” Economists also expressed concerns when talking to TIME. Felix Tintelnot, associate professor of economics at Duke University, says that though tariffs are meant to stimulate economic growth and production in the U.S., the uncertainty generated from the Trump Administration’s tariff delays and changes has had the opposite effect. “Looking back over the last few weeks, we have had so many revisions to past tariff proposals that it's really difficult to tell for decision-makers in the industry what the tariff policy will be in the next couple of months, and then the rational response to that is to delay investment,” Tintelnot says, remarking that people are expecting even further changes. “If everyone does that, then you're generating a recession.” Here’s what you need to know about the fresh recession fears amid Trump’s highly controversial tariffs. What tariffs did Trump announce on April 2? Trump had initially publicized his tariffs as “reciprocal tariffs”—meaning taxes on other countries equal to the existing tariffs foreign countries have set against American goods. However, the tariffs announced on Trump’s “Liberation Day” were not, in fact, reciprocally calculated but instead were calculated based on countries’ U.S. trade deficit levels. Countries with which the U.S. has a higher trade deficit received a higher tariff. In addition to this, the math used by the Trump Administration to come up with these tariffs also factored in each country's exports to the U.S. Per an Axios breakdown: "The formula is to divide the U.S. trade deficit with each country by that country's exports to the U.S. The final reciprocal tariff was then divided by 2, with a minimum of 10% (which applies even to those countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus)." Tintelnot says that the logic is confusing—for example, Israel eliminated tariffs on U.S. goods on April 1, but were still hit hard by a 17% tariff in the April 2 announcement. The resounding response from the global economist community has been one of confusion about how exactly the incremental tariffs added on top of the 10% tariffs was calculated. “It’s murky,” says Brian Bethune, professor of economics at Boston College, emphasizing his belief that the tariffs are likely to change again, adding even more “uncertainty” to trade policies. “The fact that countries that charge zero tariffs on the U.S. have been hit with tariffs illustrates that these are not reciprocal tariffs in their true meaning,” Tintelnot says, in agreement. “It is perfectly normal in an integrated global economy for a bilateral trade deficit to exist. A little introspection helps: You have a bilateral trade deficit with your grocery store, but a bilateral trade surplus with your employer. Why would you put a tariff on your local grocery store?” Tintelnot also notes that this method of tariff calculation hits a wall because “trade deficit can change.” This only adds to the uncertainty already being expressed by businesses, and again, economists are in agreement that uncertainty is not good for recession calculations and only fuels the risk. Per analysis conducted by The Budget Lab at Yale, Trump’s April 2 tariffs are the equivalent of a rise in the effective U.S. tariff rate of 11.5 percentage points. “The average effective U.S. tariff rate after incorporating all 2025 tariffs is now 22 ½%, the highest since 1909,” per the policy research center’s data. Some countries, including Brazil, are seemingly intending to impose retaliatory tariffs back onto the U.S., thus raising concerns of a far-reaching trade war. On Friday, April 4, China announced that they will respond with a 34% retaliatory tariff on U.S. goods beginning on April 10, matching the U.S.’ “Liberation Day” tariffs placed on them. Although Canada has not been hit with the so-called reciprocal tariffs issued on April 2, the auto industry-related tariffs and others will impact Canada. In a public address on April 3, the newly-instated Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said: "Three different sets of U.S. tariffs remain in place and will continue to pose significant threats to Canadian workers and business. They are all unjustified, unwarranted, and in our judgement, misguided.” Tintelnot highlights that it’s important to note how “extreme” all of Trump’s tariffs are. “There is no other industrialized country currently in the world that charges tariffs as high as those announced by the U.S.” he says. Is the U.S. at risk of a recession? Here’s what economists are saying According to Tintelnot, recession indicators have risen as the impact of Trump’s tariffs take hold. On Thursday, Dow Jones plunged 1,700 points, the broader S&P 500 index was 4% lower, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq sank almost 6%. Bethune says Americans are already concerned about a possible U.S. recession, pointing to the drop in consumer sentiment seen over the past couple of months. In March, a University of Michigan survey showed a significant drop in consumer sentiment as respondents cited tariff whiplash and policy uncertainty. “[Consumers] are not even going to the grocery store and paying more for vegetables because there's none available from Mexico, or going to Whole Foods, for example, and finding the big sections of fresh fruit are being shut down. They haven't really felt the full impact [yet], and they're already saying something isn't right,” Bethune says. However, while some economists, including Tintelnot, are more cautious in their discussion about a possible recession, Bethune says it’s “inevitable.” The question, he says, is just how long until it happens and for how long will it occur? He sees Trump’s admission of there being “some pain” on the horizon as only proof of the inevitability. “At least they [the Trump Administration] are not pretending that it's not disruptive, but they’re basically soft-selling it, reflecting their ignorance about the way business operates,” Bethune claims. What has Trump said about the tariffs and mounting recession fears? On April 3, as markets dipped, Trump told reporters that “it’s going very well.” “The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom,” Trump said as he left the White House. Trump had previously addressed recession fears in the lead-up to the April 2 tariffs. After signing his memorandum announcing the reciprocal tariffs on Feb. 13, Trump spoke to reporters and said that prices “could go up somewhat” at first, but then “prices will also go down.” Since then, Trump has expressed the same sentiment—stating there could be “some pain” felt by consumers, but in the end it will be worth the trouble, and he believes our economy will ultimately benefit from the tariffs. “I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said when asked if he is expecting a recession this year, during an interview with Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures on March 9. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. There are always periods of… it takes a little time. It takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us.” During another interview on Saturday, March 29, Trump told NBC News that he “couldn’t care less” if automakers raised prices because of new moves he announced on March 26 to impose a 25% tariff on imports of automobiles and certain automobile parts. “I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars,” Trump said in response to a Wall Street Journal report that stated Trump held a call in March with automaker CEOs and threatened them with even higher tariffs if they raise prices because of the import taxes. Trump denied making such a threat. Doubling down that he “couldn’t care less,” Trump added: “If the prices on foreign cars go up, they’re going to buy American cars.” On April 2, ahead of Trump unveiling his tariffs, the White House posted an article titled “Tariffs Work—and President Trump’s First Term Proves It,” pointing to tariffs in his first term as evidence that these new tariffs will stimulate the economy. “Despite the rhetoric from politicians and the media, studies have repeatedly shown tariffs are an effective tool for achieving economic and strategic objectives—just as they did in President Trump’s first term,” the article reads. Tintelnot says, though, that these tariff announcements are unlike other tariffs in the past, pointing to how the U.S. dollar has now fallen “substantially against the Euro.” “I think what this is indicative of is that there's just a flight of capital and assets outside away from the U.S. in response to this policy announcement,” Tintelnot says, adding that the tariffs are much higher this time around, “meaning we are in for a bigger price shock than in 2018-2019.”

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Donald Trump lives in the here and now. A performance artist at his core, the President has vamped his way through eight decades to often contradictory verdicts: bankruptcies and divorces matched with the White House and an improbable comeback. But here’s the thing about this devil-may-care approach to life: it may reward the hedonistic present but it fails to consider the inevitable future. The immediate incentive and the down-the-course payoff are often mismatched, and legacies are not launched in short order. On top of that, negative outcomes tend to linger longer in the public’s mind than the positive ones. That’s why the game Trump is playing with the economy is so abjectly dangerous to his legacy. When the Dow opened on Monday, it was off some 6% from Trump’s first full day in office—and that was an improvement from last month. The markets have been rocked by the sheer uncertainty being unleashed from this White House as he threatened an across-the-board tariff regime globally, targeted China with even steeper import taxes that he is now hinting may evaporate in short order, and teased trade deals as soon as this week with other nations. The tumult has left the economy in turmoil, and Americans are noticing. Which explains why he keeps blaming Joe Biden for all of the country's economic troubles, even as the idea that his predecessor is at fault becomes more absurd with every passing day. Last week, after Trump’s Commerce Department released a report showing the U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year—before Trump unleashed the tariff taunts—Trump took zero responsibility. “This is Biden, and you can even say the next quarter is sort of Biden,” he said during a Cabinet meeting. At other points, he seems content to cast blame at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, although that has not moved the needle, either. But the worries about a recession are growing, and Trump’s best efforts to dodge responsibility are seemingly not working. “I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy,” he told “Meet the Press” on Friday. Asked by moderator Kristen Welker if he was willing to send the economy into a recession as part of a longer-term fix, he dodged. “Look, yeah, it’s—everything’s OK,” he said. “What we are—I said, this is a transition period. I think we’re going to do fantastically.” Asked if a recession was coming, Trump seemed indifferent: “anything can happen.” Recessions don’t come out of nowhere. They are often the byproduct of a shaky consumer confidence and increasing anxieties, whether those sentiments are justified or not. Right now, consumer confidence is lower than even during the Great Recession, and scared consumers mean sidelined consumers. Their dollars fuel about 70 cents of every dollar in the economy, and right now they’re keeping their wallets closed. To listen to voters, they’re putting this squarely on Trump in a way they never have before. Take the latest NPR-PBS-Marist poll: 60% of Americans said the current economic situation is a result of Trump’s policies. Compare the same survey’s results at this point in Barack Obama’s first term, when he took the whacking from just 14% of voters amid a full-blown recession. Trump likes to cast himself as an all-powerful master of the universe, a titan who can bend reality to his whims. A masterful salesman, he has convinced legions of Americans of that false reality. But those same Americans are looking around and seeing some pretty grim truths staring them down as stocks sink, supply chains begin to falter, and prices keep going up. They’re worried and they are looking for someone to blame. If Trump wants to be the omnipotent colossus, then he also has to be the culpable party when Americans want to find a vessel for their unease. Trump wanted the big prize back. Now he has to carry it for a second term.

On Wednesday, a stablecoin bill called the STABLE Act advanced through the House Financial Services Committee, increasing the likelihood that Congress will pass a law this year cementing stablecoins' as a global financial tool. Proponents argue that stablecoins help the U.S. preserve the global centrality of the dollar, while allowing people worldwide to transact more freely, cheaply and securely. But while stablecoin legislation has received bipartisan support, it has also faced targeted pushback, particularly from Democrats concerned about systemic risks and conflict of interest—especially since the Trump family’s crypto company announced the creation of its own stablecoin. Critics also warn of another potentially significant side effect: that such legislation could open the door for Big Tech players like Meta, X, and Amazon to create their own privatized forms of money, further consolidating corporate power. Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: Lukasz Radziejewski/Pexels via Canva) On Wednesday, a stablecoin bill called the STABLE Act advanced through the House Financial Services Committee, increasing the likelihood that Congress will pass a law this year cementing stablecoins' as a global financial tool. Proponents argue that stablecoins help the U.S. preserve the global centrality of the dollar, while allowing people worldwide to transact more freely, cheaply and securely. But while stablecoin legislation has received bipartisan support, it has also faced targeted pushback, particularly from Democrats concerned about systemic risks and conflict of interest—especially since the Trump family’s crypto company announced the creation of its own stablecoin. Critics also warn of another potentially significant side effect: that such legislation could open the door for Big Tech players like Meta, X, and Amazon to create their own privatized forms of money, further consolidating corporate power. “This is being framed as a crypto bill, and in some ways it is. But it has not reached most people’s radar that its biggest beneficiary is likely to be large tech platforms,” says Hilary Allen, a professor at American University Washington College of Law and a vocal crypto skeptic in D.C. Both the House and Senate have passed stablecoin bills—the STABLE and GENIUS Acts, respectively—out of committee. The bills lay out guidelines for how stablecoins will be regulated, and the amount and types of reserves stablecoin issuers must have on hand. The House and Senate will now have the opportunity to reconcile the two bills in the hopes of getting a unified bill onto President Trump’s desk by the summer. Several banks, including Bank of America, have expressed interest in launching their own stablecoin, should a law pass. But under the current language of the two bills, non-financial companies would also be able to create their own stablecoins via subsidiaries. While previously proposed stablecoin bills prohibited non-banking companies from doing so, neither the STABLE nor the GENIUS Act contain such a provision. In fact, the STABLE Act says that any nonbank can issue a stablecoin as long as they acquire approval from a federal regulator. Allen says that this would open the door for Big Tech moguls like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to create their own stablecoins. Both have long been interested in the payments sector—Musk’s X has acquired money transmitter licenses in many states, while Facebook tried to launch its own cryptocurrency, Libra, in 2019 before facing stiff criticism and regulatory scrutiny. “These big tech platforms have been very interested in doing payments because they're in the data collection and monetization business—and payments data is particularly valuable because it shows what you’re actually buying,” Allen says. “The more people's transactions migrate onto these big tech platforms, that will really beef up what are already incredibly systemically important actors in our society, and put them at the center of our financial system.” Allen lays out a hypothetical scenario in which Amazon issues stablecoins. They could then conceivably scale its usage among Amazon employees and users, Whole Foods shoppers, and Washington Post subscribers, to the point that many people start relying on stablecoins as opposed to bank accounts. “That’s really bad news, because banks take the money deposited with them and loan them out into the economy, while stablecoin reserves just sit there,” Allen says. “So money that had been used productively in our economy is now just sitting with Amazon.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, made a similar point at the STABLE bill’s markup on Wednesday, warning his colleagues that stablecoins would “compete with bank deposits and undermine the ability of banks to make loans to consumers and main street businesses.” In October 2023, Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Biden, warned that if Big Tech firms assumed control of banking operations, they would “have a strong incentive to surveil all aspects of a consumer’s transactions.” He added that they could also develop personalized pricing algorithms. Arthur Wilmarth, a professor emeritus at George Washington University Law School, tells TIME that people paying for goods with stablecoins would lack fraud protection. He also points to China as a cautionary tale, where Tencent and Alibaba became dominant payments players and gained undue influence over regulators—which then led Beijing to tighten its grip and gain sway over those businesses’ decisionmaking. At the markup on Wednesday, Rep. Maxine Waters pushed for an amendment that would maintain the separation of commerce and banking, claiming that the bill as written could enable Elon Musk, Walmart, and others to create their own currencies. Wisconsin Republican Bryan Steil, a co-writer of the bill, responded that the amendment would lead to a “stifling of innovation.” Co-writer French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas and the House Financial Services Committee Chair, said that he hoped Congress could work out a “thoughtful solution” to Waters’ concerns while considering a larger crypto market structure bill. The amendment was then rejected. “I view this stablecoin legislation as presenting a very dangerous opening for big tech to get into banking in a big way,” Wilmarth says. “Once that happens, I think it will be almost impossible to ever close the door again.”

Southeast Asians expressed an increased level of trust in the U.S.—and more said they would align themselves with the U.S. over China if forced to choose, a reverse of last year’s aggregated results—according to the latest State of Southeast Asia Survey Report by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore-based think tank, published Thursday. That was, however, before President Donald Trump unveiled a slate of new tariffs yesterday that hit the region hard. Experts caution that results could look different if polled today.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. A fast-spreading panic hit Capitol Hill on Thursday, as President Donald Trump’s trade war prompted markets to suffer their worst day since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and analysts were predicting the worst was yet to come. While most Hill Republicans tried to avoid criticizing their party’s leader, frustrations were being laid bare as their talking points didn’t match those coming out of the White House. Lawmakers were insisting Trump’s new tariffs are a starting point for a negotiation while the White House said they’re actually the end of the discussion. Frantic calls to Cabinet agencies about home-district impacts were yielding platitudes and not promises. Even give-Trump-a-chance Republicans began losing patience as their office phone lines were on fire. Trump’s stated goal is to force businesses to make their wares on U.S. soil, in theory sparking a renaissance in domestic manufacturing. Economists are highly skeptical, but even Trump’s apologists worry that the short-term ramp-up is going to be rough. Midterm elections seldom reward the party holding the White House even in the best of times, and Republicans are quickly realizing that Trump's kitchen-table chaos may end up tanking their hopes for retaining control of Congress next year. “None of this was thought through,” says one Republican lobbyist who is trying to tell her association’s members not to panic. “The math doesn’t work. The end game doesn’t work. The politics doesn’t work. This is just a mess and it is going to cost Republicans seats.” Not too long ago, Congress would have had some say in the tariffs levied on other countries. But Trump is calling the trade imbalance between domestic markets and its international partners as a national emergency to avail himself of powers that allow him, without any real check, to impose these tariffs. The result is set to be a minimum 10% tax on most goods coming into the country and climbing to a net 79% charge on some stuff coming in from China. Put plainly: this was not the trade rebalancing Hill Republicans would have drafted had they been consulted. Just don’t expect things to move in any meaningful way against Trump’s orders any time soon, no matter how steamed they are. A handful of Republicans were motioning to curb Trump’s capricious trade war, but not in a way that anyone in Washington expects will go anywhere. As TIME’s Nik Popli reports from the Hill, Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican whose home-state farmers will pay dearly if the export markets close, is backing a measure that requires Congress to approve tariffs within 60 days of a White House announcement. But there is almost zero chance the bill will get sufficient backing—let alone a vote—in the GOP-led House. Grassley’s move tweaked the White House, but is just that: an annoyance. It’s the same fate that awaits a small-scale, symbolic version to undo the penalties against Canada that immediately cleared the Senate on Wednesday. For now, the Senate map in 2026 still favors Republicans, with retirements of Democrats in toss-up states like New Hampshire, Michigan, and Minnesota giving GOP strategists optimism about adding to their majorities. But the argument for electing Republicans becomes tougher once clothing and grocery bills spike, and housing starts plummet because Canadian lumber is too expensive to frame up a new development. This tit-for-tat trade retribution is an impulse that has long been part of Trump’s worldview. He thinks the United States is getting ripped off, plain and simple. He sees a deck stacked against American manufacturers, and he has the power to remedy this for what he calls the little guy. It’s all guaranteed to be bad politics for a President who returned to office on promises of curbing inflation, driving down costs, and fixing Washington—and his fellow party members who are fine going along. Republicans at the Capitol understand this is going to hurt not just Americans, but their own political futures. It’s why, in a low-key fever, they’re freaking out. But here’s the rub: while they know this is bad for just about everyone, don’t expect them to exercise their congressional authority to get Trump to back off. Their prospects may be bad right now, but they view crossing a President who leads a vindictive movement as even worse. This is not a moment where anyone in Washington is expecting political bravery. Far from it. The question many Republicans in the Capitol are asking themselves: which path will yield the least pain for selfish spoils? It’s a pretty weak way to run a superpower.

When President Donald Trump initially announced his new tariffs in February, he proposed them as a “fair and reciprocal plan on trade.” And so it was assumed that these reciprocal tariffs, as they are known, would be equal in value to the taxes that foreign countries have set against U.S. goods. In fact, the tariffs unveiled on Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” were slightly more complicated—and for some economists, more worrying. Trump first slapped a 10% blanket tariff on all imports into the U.S., including from uninhabited islands, such as the Heard and McDonald islands, and on places with which the U.S. runs a surplus, such as the U.K. “To all of the foreign Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Queens, ambassadors and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these tariffs, I say: ‘Terminate your own tariffs, drop your barriers, don't manipulate your currencies,’” Trump said while speaking from the Rose Garden at the White House. On top of this baseline 10% charge, Trump held up a cardboard chart and announced additional tariffs for some countries, calculated by “tariffs charged to the USA.” The Trump Administration ended up using a simple calculation: Each country’s U.S. trade deficit divided by its exports to the U.S.. The final reciprocal tariff was then divided by 2, with a minimum of 10%. Before the Trump Administration confirmed this method, prominent economist James Surowiecki received attention for reverse-engineering the explanation of the tariff pricing on X. “Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us,” the former financial columnist for the New Yorker posted on X. “What extraordinary nonsense this is.” The Office of the United States Trade Representative confirmed Trump’s tariff math in an explainer, stating: “Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners….To conceptualize reciprocal tariffs, the tariff rates that would drive bilateral trade deficits to zero were computed.” Though the explanation uses Greek letters and formulas, Politico notes that it is essentially the same formula that Surowiecki posted. Using this formula, the Trump Administration calculated extremely high rates for certain countries, including a new 34% tariff imposed on China, 46% for Vietnam, and 20% for the European Union. Felix Tintelnot, associate professor of economics at Duke University, sees major problems with this method of calculation—notably that the trade deficit is “normal” and “can change.” “Let's say the trade deficit in Vietnam shrinks over the next year. Well, then the tariff rate also should change. But now market participants need to forecast how much the trade deficit with individual countries will change,” Tintelnot says. “And that’s not straightforward, because we are changing so many tariffs at the same time, and ultimately, the aggregate trade deficit of the U.S. is largely determined by other macro decisions, like aggregate savings and aggregate investment, that have nothing to do with tariff rates.” He also points out how for certain countries, it does not matter whether they actually have tariffs on the U.S. Israel eliminated tariffs on U.S. goods on April 1, in preparation for Trump’s tariffs, but were still hit hard by a 17% tariff in the April 2 announcement. “The fact that countries that charge zero tariffs on the U.S. have been hit with tariffs illustrates that these are not reciprocal tariffs in their true meaning,” Tintelnot says. “It is perfectly normal in an integrated global economy for a bilateral trade deficit to exist. A little introspection helps: You have a bilateral trade deficit with your grocery store, but a bilateral trade surplus with your employer. Why would you put a tariff on your local grocery store?” Brian Bethune, professor of economics at Boston College, argues that the Trump Administration should have never calculated these tariffs for countries with such vastly different economic standings and relationships to the U.S. while utilizing the same formula. “Treating all of the small developing countries the same way as you're treating the European Union… that seems to be outrageous,” Bethune says. “Some of these countries with relatively small and more fragile economies may have somewhat of a different approach to trade. This is the problem when you lump them all together.” Trump’s new tariffs have prompted renewed fears that a U.S. recession could be on the horizon. Today, an immediate impact has been felt as a result of Trump’s “Liberation Day.” The U.S. dollar has fallen to a six-month low against the EURO and Dow Jones has plunged over 1,500 points. Trump has previously said that “some pain” could be encountered as a result of the tariffs. Bethune predicts that the Trump Administration is preparing people for a recession that is, in his professional opinion, “inevitable.”

Less than a day after President Donald Trump imposed a wave of new tariffs on dozens of countries, members of Congress from both parties were grappling with what to make of a trade strategy they fear could tank the U.S. economy, drive up consumer prices, and destabilize global markets. Democrats seized on the market reaction to underscore what they see as reckless economic policymaking. “This is uncoordinated, capricious and simply destructive,” Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told TIME Thursday morning. “He's going to tank our economy, and he could tank much of the economy around the world.” Those fears were fueling a stronger GOP pushback against Trump than seen in his second term thus far, though those speaking out still represented a minority in their party. Trump’s tariffs quickly triggered a significant sell-off in the stock market, with major indexes on track for their worst day since at least 2022. Economists warn that the volatility may only be the beginning, with some predicting prolonged economic uncertainty if the tariffs remain in place and countries retaliate with additional taxes on American goods. Four Republicans delivered a largely symbolic rebuke to Trump’s trade policy just hours after he announced them, voting Wednesday evening to undo his earlier tariffs on imports from Canada. Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted with all Democrats to invalidate a national emergency that Trump declared in February that allowed him to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian goods. Murkowski told TIME on Thursday that she generally supports tariffs as an economic principle but doesn’t support the kind of across-the-board tariffs Trump is imposing. The measure is not expected to move in the House, where House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the tariffs as a necessary measure to restore “fair and reciprocal trade” and level the playing field for American workers. Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida was similarly bullish on Trump's latest policy, and dismissed the stock market reaction. "I don't invest in the market directly. I'm focusing on what I like about tariffs. They're focused on American jobs," he tells TIME, adding, "I'm glad we finally have a person that gives a damn about American jobs.” However, others in the GOP were less certain. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson described Trump’s strategy as “a high-risk bet,” while North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis admitted he was waiting to see how the market and trading partners responded before forming a definitive stance. The most significant GOP opposition to the trade policy on Thursday came from Sen. Chuck Grassley, a senior Republican lawmaker from Iowa, who introduced a bill with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington to curtail the president’s authority to impose tariffs without congressional approval. The Trade Review Act of 2025, modeled after the War Powers Act, would require Congress to review and approve tariffs within 60 days or allow them to expire. Grassley emphasized the need to “reassert Congress’ constitutional role” in setting trade policy and prevent executive overreach. Hours later, Tillis told reporters he would support the bill. While many lawmakers expressed concern for the economic fallout from the new tariff policies, some Democrats warned that it would be a tool for Trump to further consolidate power and undermine democratic institutions. “Economists were trying to jump through hoops last night to understand it,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told TIME on Thursday. “It's not economic policy, it's not trade policy. It's an attempt to purposely destroy the economy in order for him to cut deals, industry by industry, which gets him both a little bit of economic recovery and a pledge of loyalty from those companies.” While Murphy conceded that Trump advocated for tariffs for decades, he argued that Trump’s current approach far exceeds anything he had previously endorsed. “I think both parties are in a place where they support the targeted use of tariffs,” he tells TIME. “What he announced yesterday is so sweeping and so disconnected from actual trade policy that my conclusion is that it must be part of something else.” Schiff added that by imposing tariffs on every country, Trump is trying to subdue allies and rivals from across the globe from criticizing his actions. “The only nations that seem to be immune from his caprice are the dictatorships like Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” Schiff says. “He's treating countries like he's treating corporations, like he's treating law firms, like he's treating members of the press… It's part of the same caprice that you will often find with a dictator.” Economic experts predict significant fallout from Trump’s tariff policies. Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council, estimated that the tariffs could cost the U.S. economy $30 trillion in lost value—roughly $300,000 per family of four. The Yale Budget Lab projects that these tariffs could add $3,800 in annual costs for the average American household, further exacerbating inflation, which could rise above 4% this year. The Trump Administration, however, remains confident in its approach. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the tariffs in an interview with CNBC, arguing that they would ultimately benefit the U.S. by forcing trading partners to renegotiate deals more favorable to American industries. “I expect most countries to start to really examine their trade policy towards the United States of America, and stop picking on us,” Lutnick said. “This is the reordering of fair trade.” West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, who describes himself as a businessman and not a politician, also defended the tariffs, comparing the current market response to pushing a hand down into a bucket of water. “For a little while it looks ridiculous, turbulent, but just watch it. Long enough, it'll just ease itself out,” he says. “We got to watch this for a little while and see what happens. I think the upside to America really, genuinely starting to make something is much greater than the downside.”