Flagship

Uncertainty reigns ahead of tariff reveal

Global investors and governments are bracing for a volatile week as US President Donald Trump prepares to unveil a slew of new tariffs on Wednesday. Key details about what goods and countries will be affected — and how other nations might respond — remain unknown, amplifying the growing feeling of uncertainty about the American economy. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 is on track for its largest first-quarter decline since 2020, and few investors expect calmer waters ahead. While many analysts have warned of the high-level consequences for US economic growth, local communities are also feeling the effects: “There is an uneasiness in the farm community,” one Midwestern farmer said. “I’m sympathetic to the America First agenda… But I don’t want it to become America Alone.”

Myanmar quake death toll grows

The death toll from Friday’s earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 1,600, as aftershocks and civil war complicated disaster relief efforts. The country’s military regime resumed some attacks shortly after the earthquake, while the main resistance movement declared a temporary ceasefire in the worst-hit areas. US President Donald Trump’s dismantling of foreign aid has hobbled the international response; rescue workers from China, Russia, and India have arrived, but a US team is not expected until Wednesday — a far slower response than under normal circumstances, The New York Times reported. “If we don’t show up and China shows up, that sends a pretty strong message,” a former USAID official said.

Global shifts toward authoritarianism

US President Donald Trump’s efforts to extend executive power and disrupt American politics mark an acceleration of a global shift toward strongman-led governments with authoritarian tendencies, analysts argued. While Trump has emboldened some foreign autocrats, the weakening of other nations’ institutions in favor of the executive predates his current administration. “In some senses African politics got there first,” one expert said, nodding to South Africa and Rwanda; other analysts also pointed to Turkey and Hungary. As Trump on Sunday declined to rule out seeking a third term — which the US Constitution forbids — his opponents should “adopt the viewpoint of dissident movements in autocratic states,” The Bulwark wrote, arguing Democrats have “more to learn from Alexei Navalny or the protesters in Serbia” than party leaders.

US Democrats debate ‘Abundance’

“Abundance” — and whether to embrace it — has become a central policy debate on the American left. The “abundance agenda,” as laid out in a new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, argues Democrats should embrace aggressive pro-growth policies — a “liberalism that builds,” as one Democratic lawmaker put it. For the idea to succeed, supporters need to embrace profit-driven development rather than resist it, the head of the Manhattan Institute wrote. A flaw, The New Republic argued, is that Abundance pushes supply-side liberalism without considering demand, conveniently skirting “potentially divisive questions about distribution.” Democrats can be both “more boldly reformist and more assertively redistributionist,” Matthew Yglesias argued, but they must also not ignore social and cultural issues that voters care about.

China plans bank cash injection

Four of China’s largest state-owned banks announced on Sunday a plan to raise a combined $72 billion, as Beijing ramps up its efforts to resuscitate the economy. The fundraising, which will be done through share sales to investors, represents a rare government-directed injection of capital; the finance ministry will be a major investor in the push. The capital increase is aimed at bolstering lending, which in turn could prop up the country’s ailing property sector. Chinese state lenders have seen mounting challenges, including shrinking interest margins and stagnant consumer loans in 2024, Nikkei reported. Building up banks’ capital buffers, analysts say, could also help them manage the risks facing China’s economy amid the escalating trade conflict with the US.

Russia’s war economy booms

Russia’s industrial heartland is seeing an economic renaissance as a result of the war in Ukraine. Shops, restaurants, and gym chains are opening up throughout the country’s rust belt alongside a hike in military production and new wealth stemming from heavy army recruitment: Russia gives large bonuses to conscripts, and their families get payouts if they die. “Almost all women get manicures now,” one resident of a small Russian city told the Financial Times. “We even got a private dog grooming service in our town, now that’s a real indicator.” Russia’s shift to a wartime footing in the face of Western sanctions has made the country’s economy so dependent on military spending that peace could have disastrous ramifications, The Wall Street Journal wrote.

Apple ramps up health care push

Apple is doubling down on CEO Tim Cook’s promise that the tech company’s greatest contribution to the world will be health care. The iPhone maker is working to overhaul its Health app and create a new artificial intelligence-powered doctor that would make recommendations tailored to individuals, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported. The bot is apparently being trained with input from the company’s in-house physicians; Apple is aiming to bring in external medical experts, too. One big change, Gurman noted, is the plan to include food tracking in the app, something Apple has historically avoided and that would put it in direct competition with popular apps like Noom and MyFitnessPal. The new features could be released as soon as spring of next year.

United States Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will join top global leaders at Semafor’s 2025 World Economy Summit. Taking place April 23–25, 2025, in Washington, DC, this will be the first major gathering of its kind since the new US administration took office.

Bringing together leaders from both the public and private sectors — including congressional leadership, finance ministers, and central bankers — the three day summit will explore the forces shaping the global economy and geopolitics. Across twelve sessions, it will foster transformative, news-making conversations on how the world’s decision makers are tackling economic growth in increasingly uncertain times.

April 23-25 | Washington, DC | Learn More

Poll tracks ‘religious switching’

People who were raised as Christian and Buddhist may be more likely to abandon their religion in later life, a new Pew Research poll of 36 countries suggested. These religions were found to have especially high rates of “religious switching,” with many becoming unaffiliated to any religion, perhaps because they became atheists or agnostics. The trend is far from uniform: Some 50% of South Korean adults had left their childhood religion, and Spain, Canada, Sweden, and the UK also had high rates of apostasy, while Bangladesh and Israel had barely any. Young people were found to be more likely to have changed their minds, while people raised in the Islamic, Hindu, or Jewish faiths tended to stick with their religion through life.

New theory for literal ‘brain-washing’

A team of scientists proposed a new theory for how and why cerebrospinal fluid circulates around the brain that could also help explain why we typically feel refreshed after being asleep. In the new study, researchers suggested that the brain’s blood vessels could be directing the flow: A neurotransmitter called norepinephrine causes the vessels to constrict and relax, and its levels are known to change during sleep. This could be “the motor or the driver of how we wash the brain when we sleep,” one of the researchers told Quanta Magazine. The purpose and movement of fluid in the brain has long been a mystery, and while some researchers believe it may have a waste-disposal function, others remain unconvinced.

J-pop looks to go mainstream in West

Japan wants to emulate the global success of K-pop. Korean pop music has become a massive international industry; boy band BTS alone boosted South Korea’s GDP by $4.65 billion in 2019, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Japan has a significant foothold in Western culture, perhaps most notably through video games and anime, but J-pop remains niche — and some of the genre’s most popular songs use “vocal sounds and chord changes that Western audiences aren’t used to,” one industry entrepreneur noted. Now, the rise of streaming and a government-led effort to bring J-pop to more listeners using digital distribution could help Japanese recording artists finally break into US and European markets.

March 31:

• Financial markets in India, Iran, Turkey, and more countries close to mark Eid al-Fitr.
• South Korea lifts a ban on short-selling on Seoul’s stock market.
• A French court delivers a verdict in far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s fraud trial.

Hair has historically been overlooked in art criticism as a means to understand a portrait’s full context and significance, a leading American art historian argued. This may be particularly true for portraits or paintings featuring women, Elizabeth Block, who works at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, told Artnet, noting that, especially in portraits of upper class women, the subjects would have been heavily invested in the image they were presenting to the world. Whether a woman dyed her hair, her ornamentation, or even the style of her bangs can reveal hidden information about the world she lived in. “It just always struck me as the picture being incomplete in art history and visual studies,” Block said. “Why aren’t we talking about the hairstyles?”

Glenn Fogel joined the online travel startup Priceline.com 25 years ago this month, just days before the dot-com crash. That has given him some perspective, he told Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, as travel firms’ stocks fall amid concerns over weakening US consumer confidence and foreign tourists being deterred by an America First administration.

Asked whether he thinks this is the toughest time to run a company, the CEO of Booking Holdings shoots back: “Which decade would you prefer to have lived in that was so much better?”