Flagship

Nations, firms await ‘Liberation Day’

The sweeping tariffs US President Donald Trump plans to unveil Wednesday are set to take effect immediately, the White House said. Other details about so-called “Liberation Day” — the most dramatic shift in US trade policy in decades — remain scant. Trump views the tariffs as a way to revive American manufacturing; a cudgel to settle scores and project strength; a source of revenue to pay for tax cuts; and an ideological war against a trade system and world order that Trump has long despised. Analysts are skeptical of the feasibility of his economic-specific goals — but are more certain that “the economic world we’re heading into will look nothing like the postwar free-trade consensus that preceded it,” Semafor’s Liz Hoffman wrote.

Asia manufacturing braces for trade war

Asia’s manufacturing sector is bracing for upheaval from US President Donald Trump’s flood of new tariffs. The continent has long benefited from a growth model centered around “exports to the US and a world of low trade barriers,” Bloomberg wrote. But factory activity slowed last month in several countries, including Japan and South Korea, as signs of risk bubbled up. Companies are now playing a global game of “catch-me-if-you-can,” a supply chain expert told The Los Angeles Times: Trump’s 2018 tariffs on China pushed firms to relocate to other Asian countries, but with more nations now in the line of fire, corporations are hunting for places spared by Washington — the Middle East has “become very hot at the moment.”

China’s opportunity amid trade upheaval

China may capitalize on Donald Trump’s trade salvo by trying to strengthen its regional economic ties, analysts said. Ahead of Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday, Beijing touted “great potential” for stronger trade relations with Japan and South Korea, and suggested willingness to buy more products from India to balance trade, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping proposed a “Dragon-Elephant tango” between the two neighbors. Washington is “gifting Beijing the chance to make common cause with other countries on Trump’s naughty list, to resist US tariffs,” Trivium China analysts wrote. Still, it’s unlikely that the US’ Asia partners will fully fall into China’s sphere of influence, despite Beijing’s best efforts, a Foreign Policy columnist argued, albeit with some reservation.

Experts simulate a trade war

A global trade war simulation suggested that Donald Trump’s punishing tariffs might play out in surprisingly optimistic ways. Two dozen trade experts gathered at a Washington think tank last month to game out how the world’s largest economies might respond to the escalating trade conflict. Despite initial tensions, teams representing different countries eventually moved toward making concessions and deals to lessen trade barriers, The New York Times documented. China tried to lure other governments, but participants “held China at bay to try to get a better deal with the US,” one said. The board game showed “there is a path to victory for a US tariff-first policy,” another participant said, but only if Washington focuses on striking trade agreements.

Russian official rebukes US-led truce

A top Russian official deemed a US peace proposal for Ukraine unacceptable “in its current form,” the latest sign that ceasefire talks have stalled. The rebuke comes days after US President Donald Trump said he was “pissed off” with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over the negotiations; analysts have said Moscow is prolonging the peace process as it makes battlefield advances. Putin on Monday ordered another 160,000 Russians to serve, the country’s largest conscription campaign since 2011, and recently said his army can “finish off” Ukraine’s. “I think we are moving closer to a turning point,” a Russia expert said, “where Trump understands that Putin might not have an interest in any deal.”

Finland ditches landmine treaty

Finland will withdraw from the international landmine ban convention, part of a wider Nordic movement to prepare for Russia’s growing threat. The Finnish prime minister said leaving the convention would allow the country, which shares NATO’s longest border with Russia, to begin stockpiling landmines in case the need arises. Finland also plans to boost defense spending to 3% of GDP, above NATO’s target. Helsinki is already among Europe’s top cities for defense investments, the BBC reported. Poland and the Baltic countries also plan to leave the treaty. Norway, meanwhile, is restoring its Cold War military bunkers — and reportedly considering a new European Union membership bid, the Financial Times reported, partly to boost cooperation in the face of Russian and US unpredictability.

DOJ seeks death penalty in UHC case

The US Justice Department is seeking the death penalty against the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Luigi Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder as an act of terrorism, in a high-profile case that drew international attention and polarizing reactions in the US. The move is in line with US President Donald Trump’s push to renew death penalty requests; former President Joe Biden’s administration had put a moratorium on federal executions. But prosecutors could find it challenging to convince a jury to vote unanimously for a death sentence for Mangione in light of the outpouring of public support he has received.

Former Colombian President Iván Duque 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, 2025 | Washington, DC | Learn More

Canada ends grave search

Canada ended a search for Indigenous bodies around former residential schools. The country forced Native children into boarding schools from the 19th century. In 2021, an anthropologist said ground-penetrating radar found evidence of 215 graves at one school; later, similar claims were made of 80 other schools. But no bodies were found, despite several excavations, and Ottawa has withdrawn funding for the search. Some skeptics argue that while the residential school system was horrible, there are no unmarked graves. Conservative voices in particular are unconvinced: “There is a roughly 0.00 percent chance that there are actually 200 dead Native kids interred on the grounds of a well-known boarding school,” one wrote in The National Review.

Torpedo bats go mainstream

A physicist-invented “torpedo” bat is all the rage in American baseball. The sluggers are uniquely shaped for each batter so that the widest part of the bat is placed where each player most often hits the ball. The New York Yankees used them over the weekend, hitting a monster 15 home runs over three games against the Milwaukee Brewers. While some teams have experimented with them for years, the Yankees’ success prompted more teams to order the bats, which were dreamed up by an MIT-educated physicist-turned-baseball coach: “It’s just about making the bat as heavy and fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball,” said inventor Aaron Leanhardt.

Asia shells out for pets

China’s city-dwellers spent $41 billion on pets last year, part of a wider Asia trend. Birth rates in much of the continent are low — in South Korea, the average woman will have just 0.75 children — but pet ownership is up. India’s pet-care market is projected to grow nearly 60% by 2029, and China is expected to have twice as many pets as children by 2030. The average Hong Kong owner spends around $1,250 a year on each dog or cat. One pet parent told Nikkei that animals were “more affordable and less of a lifestyle change” than children, while an analyst said the growing “humanization” of pets — providing human-quality food and popular terms like “doggie mommy” — drives higher spending.

April 2:

• Thailand hosts the seven-nation BIMSTEC summit, which includes South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
• The HSBC Indian manufacturing PMI data for March is released.
• Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender celebrates his 48th birthday.

A sculptor’s new work draws inspiration from the Depression-era craze of endurance dance competitions in the US. Marathon Dance Relief at Ireland’s St Carthage Hall depicts dance partners exhausted after enduring brutal week-long contests to win prizes worth one year’s salary. While the high-octane competitions were hugely popular in the 1920s and 1930s — serving as precursors to contemporary reality dance shows — they took a toll on the contestants, and in rare cases, led to injuries or deaths. But Nicole Wermers’ figures — “slumped and clutching at each other,” suggests that her true subject is “the doomed waltz of the unit of the couple in society,” The Guardian wrote, “the absolute necessity and disorienting terror of dependency on another person.”

A power struggle within South Africa’s coalition government over the control of key parts of Africa’s most industrialized economy is at the center of the country’s unprecedented budget deadlock, Sam Mkoleli reported for Semafor.

“What is clear is that there is a complete lack of trust, and it’s not going to improve,” one Johannesburg-based analyst told Mkoleli. “We are in an ‘undead’ coalition where no one can leave, but no one is especially happy.”