Global News Podcast - President Trump announces sweeping tariffs on US imports

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

The US President Donald Trump has announced universal 10% tariffs on all imports into the US. There will also be a 25% tariff on all foreign-made vehicles. Also: BBC team reaches quake-hit city of Mandalay in Myanmar.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service, we investigate the struggle to defend the cables and pipelines beneath the waves. Seabed sabotage or the threat of it works because much of it can be denied. The ship that dragged an anchor across a pipeline, oh no, it was just an accident. That knowing wink that says you can't prove it, but you know it was us. The Subsea War. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Thursday, therd of April these are our main stories. President Trump has announced sweeping tariffs on imports to the United States, starting at a baseline of 10% and rising steeply for countries with the highest trade deficits with the US. A BBC reporter in Mandalay, close to the epicentre of last week's earthquake in Myanmar, says no rescue work is being carried out on many of the collapsed buildings and hospitals don't have the staff or resources to cope.

Also in this podcast. It is not going to hit the earth. I don't know the exact probability, but we are confident the earth is in the clear. But is the asteroid, code named 2024YR4, hurtling towards a collision with the moon? President Trump has announced sweeping new tariffs on goods entering the US from around the world. He said the date would be remembered as Liberation Day when prosperity returned to America. Mr Trump spoke to an invited audience in the Rose Garden of the White House in

Washington DC. My fellow Americans this is Liberation Day, waiting for a long time. April 2nd 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed and the day that we began to make America wealthy again. We're going to make it wealthy, good and wealthy. President Trump said American taxpayers had been what he called pillaged by foreigners for more than 50 years. But he said it was not going to happen anymore.

In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal. That means they do it to us and we do it to them. Very simple. Can't get any simpler than that. This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history.

It's our Declaration of Economic Independence. For years, hardworking American citizens were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it's our turn to prosper and in so doing use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt and it'll all happen very quickly. Mr Trump then outlined what he called the tariff imbalances which the US currently faces in the global market

The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 tariff on motorcycles meanwhile Thailand and Others are charging much higher prices like 60% India charges 70% Vietnam charges 75% And others are even higher than that. Likewise, until today, the United States has, for decades, charged a 2.5 tariff. Think of that. 2.5 percent on foreign-made automobiles.

The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs, and they have 20 percent VATs, much, much higher. India charges 70 percent. And perhaps, worst of all, are the non-monetary restrictions imposed by South Korea, Japan, and very many other nations as a result of these colossal trade barriers. Eighty-one percent of the cars in South Korea are made in South Korea. Ninety-four percent of the cars in South Korea are made in South Korea. 94% of the cars in

Japan are made in Japan. Against this background, he then outlined his approach to US global tariffs and foreign-made vehicles. That's why effective at midnight, we will impose a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles. The measures also include a broad baseline tariff of 10% on all imported goods, with much higher rates for what he called the most serious offenders. Let's get reaction to the news from the White House from around the world. I first spoke to Peter Bowes, our Washington correspondent.

So it seems that these tariffs, according to Donald Trump anyway, are all about writing previous wrongs. There's a lot of history here, I think, as far as the president is concerned. It's something that he has, even before he became a politician, it's something that he's been talking about and has felt very strongly about the way in which America trades with the rest of the world. And I think what was interesting to some extent was, and we've seen this over the last couple of days,

that maybe his stance has mellowed a little bit. He was talking about reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world, saying that essentially if they do it, we'll do it back to them. He said that makes it quite simple. But he also made this point that some of those reciprocal tariffs, at least from the American side, will be lower than those being imposed on the US. And I think he is aware that there will be retaliation, that this isn't the end of the matter. This, in some respects, is the beginning of the matter for the rest of the world.

And there'll be world leaders right now considering how precisely, how to respond to this. And America will have to deal with that and Donald Trump has used the phrase being nice or being kind to the rest of the world. That said, make no mistake this is all about America, this is about as he's been saying making America great again a rebirth as he said and setting in place rules that may well stay in place for quite a long time, unless, and it's quite possible, unless they are renegotiated with individual countries. There will clearly be domestic implications of all this. He said factories will come roaring back,

but in the short term prices of many goods that ordinary Americans buy are likely to go up. But basically this is a high-risk strategy, isn't it? I think it's a very high-risk strategy and clearly less things change dramatically. This is going to be the final four years in office for President Trump. So he isn't fighting another election himself but the Republicans will want to do well at the next midterm elections and they could feel the heat in terms of how Americans react to this if Americans see prices going up in the shops over and potentially over the next few days this could happen very quickly there could be political implications

for the Republicans moving forward. Peter Bowes in Washington. Well the European Union faces 20% tariffs. Katja Adler is our Europe editor. I asked her how the EU will react. Well, there was a lot of trepidation across Europe. I'm standing by the European Commission at the moment. It, of course, deals with trade on behalf of all 27 EU member states. Lights are on there.

They are carefully considering their next move. They've chosen not to make a statement tonight. They do not want to up the ante. They think a global trade war is in nobody's interest, but they think they need to stand firm. Unlike the UK, for example, which is taking a more softly carefully approach, the EU thinks there's no point. I mean, Donald Trump shows a fondness for the UK of sorts when it comes to the EU animosity. Tonight, he said, the EU's pathetic. It rips us off.

So the Commission has prepared a range of possible retaliatory measures on US goods and US services as well, like US banks, big tech, Metta, Apple, for example. But as I say, it's going to be careful about its next move. And in the meantime, a lot of concern in the countries who are likely to be most hit. Think about Germany, 25% tariffs on cars and France, the winemakers, the champagne makers, both of those industries in Germany and in France look to the US for 20% of their income. So, you

know, they expect to be hit hard by this. There are a few unifying moments like this in the EU's history. To what extent does it really consolidate the EU as a block? Well, as I say, some countries will be hit harder than others, and so some countries will prefer that the Commission takes tougher or less tough measures. And this is something that the Commission has to think about on all of their behalf in the coming days. But unifying, yes, but I think that the main concern here is that the European Union should not be out of pocket. So the Commission has other things up its sleeve, as well as wanting to sit down with Donald Trump, hoping to negotiate. It

also says it's actually got to complete the single market itself, the European single market. There are lots of internal barriers barriers which it says that will help European businesses if it can take down those barriers and also it looks to make other trade deals or deepen existing trade deals with other countries apart from the United States. So it says it's got a lot of tools at its disposal. Its primary concern is to look after European businesses. It says it will do whatever it takes. It's also talked about economic packages in the short term to help businesses or sectors that are particularly badly hit. Katja Adler in Brussels. Imports from China will face a 34% tax.

What's been the reaction there? The BBC's China correspondent, Stephen McDonnell, is in Beijing. Well, these significant new tariffs on Chinese goods entering the US come off the back of the significant tariffs on Chinese goods, which were already in place. Care of the Trump administration. Now, naturally, they're going to hurt the ability of Chinese companies to sell stuff into America. of Chinese companies to sell stuff into America. Then Beijing's response is naturally going to hurt the ability of US companies to sell stuff into this huge

market. But in a strange way it's also a bit of a gift for Xi Jinping because he's portraying this country as the free trade country, as the backer of multilateral institutions. And just last week, China's leader was sitting down in this city with the CEOs of global corporations and saying, well, look at the US under Donald Trump and look at us. We're open for business. And every time Donald Trump does something like this,

it makes that job easier and easier for him. Stephen McDonnell in China. More governments as we've been hearing around the world have been absorbing the contents of Mr Trump's speech and calculating the likely impact on their economies. Before the announcement, some leaders spoke of retaliating against any US imposed tariffs, while others advocated a more pragmatic approach and warned against stoking a trade war.

Australia, which like the UK is facing 10% tariffs, said the US decision was totally unwarranted and would change the perception of the relationship between the two countries. The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced special measures to protect the country's economy. We cannot control what challenges we face, but we can determine how we respond. Australia will always respond by defending our national interest. And our government will always deal with global challenges the Australian way, standing up for our national interests, backing our people and building for the future.

The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. As we record this podcast, the financial markets have begun to assess the possible impacts of these US tariffs. On the White House lawn, President Trump showed a chart illustrating various countries around the world and associated tariffs. Sumi Somaskanda spoke to the BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam who's in London. He first spoke of the financial reaction there and then the global effect. Well I think people are sort of digesting the details. Clearly, what we have here is a 10% universal tariff that is then added to, as we've all

seen on that famous chart now, where the US suggests certain levels of tariff. And President Trump said he was being kind in only applying half in return. Well, the level of tariff assumed in that chart that is levied by the other country, I think that was subject to some debate. It isn't the traditional level, the number that you see in the World Trade Organisation tables, for example. It includes all sorts of other

things like VAT, regulations on agricultural imports and that sort of thing. So I think the premise that these are entirely reciprocal will be questioned by other countries. There is a certain degree of reciprocity though in terms of the amount that has been levied. And so I think the sense in the UK amongst politicians is, well, it could have been worse. 10% is highly material though. It's worth six to seven billion pounds in terms of the export flows to the US and many people in the UK who will see that the US government has acknowledged that on the US own measures there is a surplus, the US has a surplus, it sells more into the UK than the UK sells to the US, so why is there a rationale for any sort of tariff at

all against the UK with the special relationship. But then I also think that we're seeing now just the beginnings of the stock market reaction in terms of futures markets and Sharpe Falls suggested, intriguingly, although not particularly surprisingly, for apparel companies, clothing companies of course. The really notable surprise here is the very high numbers on a number of smaller countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, you were talking about this a moment ago, which have significant surpluses with the US, which are essential

to the supply chains of some of America's biggest companies. The bottom line here is it appears that Donald Trump wants to stop that flow of trade. He wants those deficits to go back to zero. Now that either happens by America selling more to these countries or those countries selling less to the US. So this is absolutely critical. Will these flows happen? And if they don't, what's going to happen is that US prices are going to go up. The prices that they pay in shops that source from Bangladesh and Cambodia and Vietnam and there is trade worth hundreds of billions from those sorts of countries that those

prices will go up. The BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam. Now two other news Myanmar's military government has announced a ceasefire for three weeks to concentrate on recovering from last week's devastating earthquake. The move appears to be a U-turn. Well, the head of the military authorities, Min Aung Hlaing, indicated only on Tuesday that he'd continue ordering attacks on rebels, some of whom had already announced their own ceasefires. The announcement was made on state television. To show sympathy to the victims of the earthquake across the country and provide effective rescue

and relief operations, the military has declared a temporary ceasefire for the period between the 2nd and 22nd of April. Despite Myanmar's government saying it will not let foreign journalists into the country to report on the aftermath of the quake, the BBC's Yogita Limay and her team managed to travel to the city of Mandalay, where hundreds of buildings have collapsed. One of the places that the rescue efforts are focusing on right now is the Ulathin monastery where I am. And in front of me, literally, I can just see a huge part of the structure has just collapsed and all around me there are concrete blocks we're having to be really careful as well just to make sure that we're safe from any

hanging debris. In front of me I can see rescuers there are varying estimates of how many people were stuck inside the structure when it collapsed. Some say 80, some say more than 100. What we're told is that there were a lot of Buddhist monks who were taking an examination when this building collapsed. Where I'm standing right now, it's also a really, really strong smell of dead bodies, basically, of rotting flesh. It's so strong, we're all having to wear at least two masks.

In the compound of the monastery the families of those trapped are sitting under a makeshift tent. We meet Ula Ong, the father of 29-year-old monk Uthuzana who's trapped inside. Knowing my son ended up like this monk Uthuzana who's trapped inside. Knowing my son ended up like this, I'm inconsolable. I'm filled with grief, Ulaong says, as his face crumples into a sob. At the rescue site, work is slow and demanding.

They've spotted what they think are three bodies under the debris, but even getting to them to extricate them is a really difficult task. And while I've been walking around here, I can see the robes, the orange robes that monks usually wear. The whole place really just a pile of debris, all collapsed one on top of the other. And so getting people out, alive or dead, is extremely difficult. The main difficulty in this operation is... Neeraj Singh, who's leading the team of rescuers who've come from India to help, describes how tough their task is.

There is a collapse pattern called pancake, and which is the most difficult or most challenging collapse pattern the chances of live victim is very few as we are driving around the city we're seeing lots of places where there is just no rescue work going on on one street I'm looking at a building which is about five stories high it used to be a hotel and then was renovated into an office space and it's literally sort of come down onto the road and we're told by people here that there are five

people stuck inside and no rescue efforts have begun. In fact I can see the families I think of those who were stuck inside and someone's pointed to a woman whose son was working in this building and I'm just going to speak to her now. Nanxin Hein has been waiting on this street for five days hoping someone will come and search for her son Sai Han Pan. I'm very distressed. I'm just holding on hoping to see my son's face. Whether he's dead or alive, I just want to see his body.

The military government has uneasy relations with many foreign countries, especially Western nations, and so the only foreign rescuers arriving here are from countries like India, China and Russia, among others. The shortage of manpower is severely hampering the possibility of anyone being dug out alive. That report by the BBC's Yogati Limai from the city of Mandalay in Myanmar. Still to come. It's a groundbreaking exhibition in many ways because it's the first time that MI5 has collaborated with another institution to tell its history.

The public exhibition about the work of Britain's security service, MI5, opens shortly in London. More secrets revealed later. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service, we investigate the struggle to defend the cables and pipelines beneath the waves. Seabed sabotage or the threat of it works because much of it can be denied. The ship that dragged an anchor across a pipeline, oh no, it was just an accident. That knowing wink that says you can't prove it, but you know it was us. The Subsea War.

Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now to Gaza. And a medic in the territory who survived an Israeli attack on a Red Crescent convoy in which 15 emergency workers were killed has challenged the Israeli military's justification for opening fire. He told BBC News that the ambulances were clearly marked when they were attacked near Raffa just over a week ago. Israeli soldiers had said that the lights were off and claimed that the vehicles were acting suspiciously. Our correspondent Dan Johnson reports from Jerusalem.

In Gaza, even collecting the dead can be dangerous. A UN team recorded this last week, witnessing civilians under fire whilst they were searching for the missing emergency workers. When they reached the area area they found 15 bodies buried along with the mangled remains of their ambulances and a fire engine. Israel says the vehicles move suspiciously towards its soldiers with their lights off in the early morning darkness

but what happened here is being described as a massacre and a possible war crime. Munther is the only survivor, a volunteer medic and a witness who's now bearing testimony. I was sitting in the back. We left headquarters roughly at dawn. At around 5 a.m. the UN car was shot at directly in the street. He survived, he says, by throwing himself to the floor of the ambulance. And his account challenges Israel's justification for opening fire. During day and at night, it's the same. External and internal lights are on.

Everything tells you it's an ambulance that belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent. All the lights were on until we came under direct fire. Gaza's paramedics carried their own colleagues to their funerals earlier this week. UN says more than a thousand medical workers have been killed in this conflict. The cries here are of grief but also for accountability. When aid workers have been mistakenly killed during this conflict, Israel has apologized and promised answers. But now there's none of that. It is defending its actions in this incident and justifying this loss of life by saying it was targeting Hamas fighters. Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar was questioned about the killings and said soldiers did not open fire randomly on the ambulances. Uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals.

Following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military terrorist, Mohammed Amin Ibrahim Shoubaki. But that name is not on the list of those killed. There is international outrage at the use of such indiscriminate deadly force. Sam Rose is the acting director for the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. One of their employees is amongst the dead. They were buried in shallow graves in a sand berm in the middle of the road, treated with complete indignity and what would appear to be an infringement of international humanitarian laws.

Only if we have an investigation, a full and complete investigation, that we'll be able to get to the bottom of it. Montha says he was questioned for 15 hours. But what of Israel's claim Hamas may have used the ambulances as cover? That's utterly untrue. All crews are civilian. We don't belong to any militant group. Our main duty is to offer ambulance services and save people's lives. No more, no less. We put month as a count to Israel's military. They haven't yet responded. Israel's offered few details of these deaths, no substantial evidence of the threat its soldiers faced.

And some fear those answers may never emerge from the mass grave dug in Gaza's sand. That report by Dan Johnson in Jerusalem. In a separate development, Syrian state media say Israel has carried out airstrikes on the country's scientific research building in Damascus and Hama Airport, 200 kilometres to the north of the capital. Israel, which rarely comments on such raids, has mounted numerous strikes on Syria over recent years. It first bombed a research center shortly after the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad in December, claiming it was used to develop guided missiles and chemical weapons.

German police say they've shut down one of the world's biggest platforms distributing images of child sex abuse. Kid Flix carried over 90,000 still images and thousands of hours of video footage. A spokesman described the operation as possibly the biggest blow ever against this kind of child sexual abuse. Anna Hologun reports from the European Police Agency's headquarters in The Hague. A warning this report is distressing. The seizure of a server was the catalyst for the operation code name Stream. It contained around 72,000 videos of children being exploited and abused. Kidflix was created in 2021 by

a cyber criminal who made a fortune as it rapidly became one of the most popular platforms among paedophiles. By uploading their own images of child abuse users could earn tokens to view more illegal videos. 79 people have been detained on suspicion of sharing and distributing the images. Some are accused of creating the content themselves. Europol says as a result of the platform being taken down at least 39 children have been removed from harm. Now it's almost a contradiction in terms. A public exhibition about the work of Britain's security service, also known as MI5. By its nature the UK's counterintelligence agency works in the shadows but there are files and objects that can now be put on display to tell

the story or perhaps part of the story of MI5 from its foundation in the early years of the 20th century up until the modern era. It's a joint exhibition with Britain's National Archives in West London. Mark Dunton, its creator, told James Menendez more. It's a groundbreaking exhibition in many ways because it's the first time that MI5 has collaborated with another institution to tell its history. So the aim of the exhibition is to illustrate the history of MI5 from 1909 when it was founded up to modern times using a selection of fascinating documents which have been transferred to us from the security service, plus never been seen before objects which they have loaned to us, which

reveal some of the paraphernalia of spying. Tell us about some of the objects that people can see. And going back all the way to the very start of the security service, I think a shriveled lemon is there. Tell us about that. Yes. Well, that lemon incriminated a German spy called Karl Müller. He came to Britain in 1915. He was actually using the lemon for secret writing purposes, lemon juice, invisible ink.

And the lemon was actually found in a dressing table drawer in his lodgings when the police and a couple of MI5 officers went round to arrest him. He was using it to send secret messages in between the lines of an innocuous looking business letter, a warm eye and had been placed over the letter revealing the secret writing. Gosh. Moving on a few years, tell us about another very famous British traitor, a member of the Cambridge Five, who were spying for Moscow towards the beginning of the Cold War, because there's a briefcase belonging to one of them. Tell us about that.

Yes, indeed. In the exhibition, there's a dispatch case which was owned by Guy Burgess, and he left that at the reform club in the Palmao in London, just before he fled to Moscow. I mean, a piece of history, but a dark bit of history for MI5. Presumably, the documents that were in the case, they're not on show are they? No, they were all removed In fact, there was another case which another of the Cambridge spies had picked up and he'd actually removed a number of Incriminating items from that other case Yes, I mean it's true things didn't always go right for MI5 the exhibition exhibition shows the high points and also some of the low points where things didn't go so well. Tell us about another aspect of the early days of the security service. The organisation

took a rather dim view of women, didn't it? I certainly didn't think they were fit for espionage or counter espionage. It's interesting you say that. It's true that MI5 was largely male-dominated for a lot of the time, and only recently has it truly become much more diverse. However, this really interesting document in the exhibition written by Maxwell Knight, he was a legendary spymaster back in the 1930s. He very much advocates the use of women as agents because he says women have particular qualities of intuition and guile and they've actually got an advantage over men and he did put it into practice with a lady called Olga Gray who was known as Miss X and she helped to break up the Woolwich Arsenal spiring

a soviet-inspired thing so it is interesting there is stuff in the exhibition which might confound some expectations perhaps. That was the curator Mark Danton. Astronomers have used a space telescope to observe an asteroid codenamed 2024 YR4 which earlier this year seemed to be at a small risk of hitting Earth in December 2032. Earth is now safe but astronomers are cheering on a possible collision with the moon. 2024 YR4 has been labelled a so-called city killer asteroid, not a planet destroyer. The statistician David Spiegelhalter had originally speculated on the chances of the astronomical object hitting planet Earth. The probability is currently at 2.1 per cent, but it depends on your feeling about risk.

Many people would say, oh, well, that's not very much at all, we could ignore it. If you're a gambler, you might think that's a realistic possibility. It's a bit less than zero coming up on roulette or a double six with two dice. It's about the chance of dying at heart surgery at the moment. Well researchers have now updated those probabilities. Evan Davis heard more from Dr. Andrew Rivkin, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the US state of Maryland. It is not going to hit the earth.

I don't know the exact probability but we are confident the earth is in the clear. Now one of the things that I think you have said is that it might hit the moon. I think the 2% is now applied to hitting the moon. Is that about right? We're continuing to measure it. 2% chance of hitting the moon, that could go up, it could go down. Obviously, as the statistician said, it's a 98% chance or so that it won't hit. We'll see where that number goes. Right. There also are unlikely to be many people on the moon, Christmas 2032. We were worried that it might knock the moon into pieces and then that would affect us on Earth.

Good news for that too. We think that if it were to hit the moon, the crater it would make would maybe be about a kilometre across, maybe 500 meters across. And there are millions of craters that size on the moon. The moon has been hit by objects the size of 2024 YR4 millions of times, and it's still up there doing its thing. Right. How big is this one? It's about 60 meters across, so it's the size of maybe a 15 or 20 story building.

So it's small compared to things like 15 or 20 story building so it's small compared to things like Jupiter or a lot of the things that we talked about in astronomy it's human scale you can imagine how big it is. What's the size of what they might call a planet killer what's the size of one that really sort of wipes out life on earth? Those are more like a kilometer across and then the one that we think did in the dinosaurs was more like 10 kilometers. Amazing that you're able to give such precise kind of estimates of where they're going to go.

People have been studying the paths of the planets and things in the sky for literally thousands of years. And the math involved in doing it is hundreds of years old. And we have these amazing telescopes that can give us this great data that we can feed into those numbers. Thank you for giving us a good news story. So look, we're not going to be wiped out three days before Christmas 2032. Evan Davis speaking to Dr. Andrew Rivkin from Johns Hopkins University.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspot. This edition was mixed by Tom Bartlett, the producer was Liam McSheffrey, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye. because much of it can be denied. The ship that dragged an anchor across a pipeline, oh no, it was just an accident. That knowing wink that says you can't prove it, but you know it was us. The Subsea War.

Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.