Global News Podcast - Trump recognises tariff 'transition problems'

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

US President Donald Trump says transition to new trade world won't be easy, as markets process the White House’s 145% tariff rate for China. Also: Prada agrees to buy rival luxury fashion brand Versace.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Friday the 11th of April, these are our main stories. Donald Trump acknowledges that a period of difficult transition is inevitable after his tariff policies trigger another day of turmoil on Wall Street. A general strike against public spending cuts in Argentina disrupts transport and other services. A helicopter crashes into New York's Hudson River with reports that all six people on board have been killed. Also in this podcast...

Also in this podcast, Prada buys Versace in a billion dollar deal. Transition problems. That's a term the US President Donald Trump used during a cabinet meeting at the White House to describe the recent turmoil in the US stock market. After it surged on Wednesday in response to his partial U-turn on tariffs, it fell again sharply on Thursday. Shares in Europe and Asia also rallied initially after Mr Trump announced that he would limit tariffs for 90 days on nearly all countries with the glaring exception of China on which he has imposed tariffs of well over a hundred percent prompting Beijing to impose its own hefty retaliatory tariffs on US goods entering China raising fears that their all-out trade war will have devastating repercussions around the world. The US

president is also facing accusations that he manipulated the stock market after he posted on his Truth social site that it was a great time to buy, just hours before his announcement of a 90-day pause on his original tariff plans caused markets to soar. John Sudworth reports. As share prices fell again, President Trump held a three-hour Cabinet meeting, much of it in front of the TV cameras, and with the now familiar sight of Cabinet members taking turns to shower him with praise. Countries were queuing up to strike trade deals, he was told. America was getting the respect it deserved.

Mr Trump himself appeared to admit that the markets don't seem entirely convinced. There's going to be a transition cost, he said. But he repeated his assurance that it'll all work out in the end, insisting it's going to be a beautiful thing. Democrats, meanwhile, are raising questions about the president's social media activity in the hours before he announced the 90-day pause on many of his global tariffs, when he posted, this is a great time to buy. With share prices initially shooting up, his opponents want to know

if he, his family or his officials made any money, a call dismissed by a White House spokesman as partisan political games. John Sudworth. Well, the White House had announced a 125% tariff on China on Wednesday. But now it's saying that it's even higher than that. 145%. Our North America business correspondent Erin Delmore explains why the figure has changed. The number is 145%. I can tell you how you got there. You know, the Trump administration a while ago put tariffs of 20 percent on Chinese imports into the United States. And the administration said that was over China's handling of fentanyl matters, fentanyl and the illicit substance that President Trump has been laser focused on. They added 125 percent yesterday. And of course, there was a climb up in that direction with some retaliation from China also. And

they did clarify today that those two numbers stacked. So that's how we get to the 145 percent tariff rate. As you can imagine, it's a huge number. It's also a deeply important number to investors here. When we saw that clarification come out, stocks on Wall Street actually dipped even lower fueling this sell-off today. So the euphoria and the goodwill that we saw on Wall Street yesterday after President Trump announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs for most countries quickly petered

out over the course of today, at one point having yesterday's gains. Yes, because there's still so much uncertainty. But one thing that is certain is that U.S. tariffs on other countries are still much higher than before, despite his partial U-turn. And that's part of the reason why stock markets are falling. Absolutely. This is about the cost of goods, what it costs to bring goods into the United States, and then how it affects other markets that are importing

goods from the United States. And so a lot of traders here and a lot of businesses are trying to figure out how their business is affected by these tariffs. And as you say, the 10%, what the administration calls a baseline or a floor, but a broad 10% tariff on many, many countries is still in effect, as are 25% tariffs on things like metals and autos.

There is a wider group of goods that come from Canada and Mexico that are not compliant with a trade deal that was put together by President Trump during his first term. So there are elevated tariff rates and in fact listening to a tax expert earlier today whom I've interviewed before saying that the tariff rate, the effective tariff rate is higher than it's been since the 1940s. So this is really just a very big change and that is a big part of what has investors rattled today. Erin Dalmore. So how is the trade war between the world's two biggest economic powers being viewed inside China itself? Here's our China media analyst Kerry Allen.

There's definitely messaging in government media, Chinese government media, that the US has taken a huge gamble by doing this. And there's really a feeling that it's one that it will lose. So there's messaging being conveyed by the government. There's really a feeling that it's one that it will lose. There's messaging being conveyed by the government that there's no winners in a trade or tariff war and that everybody will be impacted globally. Within mainland China, there's a feeling that China will face the softest blow. There's been an appreciation for China responding quickly to the U and also domestically responding quickly with measures to support its stock market.

What I'm seeing is a lot of appreciation both in the media and social media today from Chinese people. There's a feeling that China learned a lot from the last trade war of 2018 and that actually it's prepared when it comes to this one that it will keep going with the states and it's very confident that it will win. Any hint from Chinese officials as to how a deal could be struck because this can't carry on forever? Well, the Ministry of Commerce has said today that it is prepared to sit down with the US

and talk and try and reach a resolution over this. But it has the feeling that China is being bullied. I mean, that's a message, a word that I keep seeing again and again, that the US's actions are bullying China, singling China out. There's a real feeling that if you put more pressure on us, we're going to respond with equal pressure. And one victim of this standoff appears to be Hollywood, with China further cutting the number of US films allowed to enter the huge Chinese market. Yeah, I mean China has long term already restricted what films it allows into the country. China has a very restrictive media environment. So a number of Hollywood films don't make

it into the country anyway. And China is quite confident that it's got its own blockbusters. I mean in recent months there's been a big focus on a film called Nezha, Nezha 2, an animated film that's been a huge international blockbuster. China's gained confidence from that. I think that's why we're seeing this suggestion that China might hit Hollywood imports because it's gained confidence at the beginning of the year that it can produce films as good as any that the US produces. And China had been hoping to form alliances with other countries hit by the US tariffs, but on Thursday Australia declined Beijing's proposal to work together to counter those tariffs.

It did, yes. And China has expected that countries aren't going to fully side with China. I mean, what I'm seeing a lot in the media is just this message that internationally, this is an opportunity to reshape global trade and that everybody's quite cross with the US over what's happening. And there's a lot of uncertainty. And China is really putting out messaging that it's confident that it can establish new trade opportunities if other countries are prepared to overlook past grievances and work more closely with the country. Our China media analyst Kerry Allen. Thousands of workers across Argentina have been taking part in a general strike against the government's public spending cuts. All domestic flights

were cancelled and train and metro services suspended in the capital Buenos Aires and other major cities. It's the third general strike called by Argentina's powerful trade unions since President Javier Mele took office about a year and a half ago. Our Americas regional editor, Leonardo Rocha, told me more about the strike. It's been quite comprehensive and quite successful according to the union leaders, the CGT, which called for this strike, representing many unions in many areas. So all domestic flights were cancelled, no trains, no underground, most shops closed. Only the buses in Buenos Aires were working because they belong to a different union. But it's been quite comprehensive and the unions remain very powerful in Argentina and from the

beginning of the Javier Millet government they're been fighting his austerity measures. And how effective have his austerity measures been? If you look at the figures they've been quite successful. He inherited a completely destroyed economy, hyperinflation on the rise was 211% when he took office and it's now down to 66% a year, which is still high, but it's going down. The economy is growing now after a difficult year, but what the unions say is the picture is different for the most vulnerable in society. For example, a lot of people rely on the value of the minimum wage and the government hasn't adjusted that according to inflation.

And the same thing goes for pensions. So they estimate that people lost at least one-third of the real value of their pensions or wages within a year and a half and they say something has to be done. There was also the threat of privatizing the airlines and other companies that the unions oppose. The International Monetary Fund has given a big loan to Argentina and Mr. Millay's critics say this shows that his reforms are not sustainable without outside help. Well they might have a point there because the IMF this week they agreed to give him a big loan of 20 billion dollars And that's to back up his plan. The IMF is big fans of his austerity plans

He managed to control the economy But the problem is he's been using the currency to keep the inflation low and what's been happening the value of the the peso The the currency is steady And what's been happening, the value of the peso, the currency is steady, but you have an inflation of 60, 80% since he took office. So things are very expensive. It's becoming difficult for Argentina to export because the currency is overvalued. But he's holding that and to hold that, he has to sell lots and lots of dollars and he might run out of dollars.

Leonardo Russia, a helicopter has crashed into New York's Hudson River. US media say six people on board, five passengers and a pilot were killed. The helicopter was reported to be carrying a family of five from Spain, including three children. The city's mayor, Eric Adams, paid tribute to the victims at a news conference. At this time, all six victims have been removed from the water. And sadly, all six victims have been pronounced deceased. Again, we're praying for the families and our gratitude to the rescuers and the courage that was displayed in their dedication. Shortly after the crash, Michelle Flurry gave us this update.

I'm standing here on the edge of the Hudson River, which separates Manhattan from Jersey City. The crash, as we understand it, happened on the other side there. There are the sort of red and blue flashing lights of emergency services. The emergency call came in and since then we're sort of beginning to get a little bit more detail of what we understood happened with this helicopter. Apparently there were six people on board in the crashed helicopter. There is still a lot of unanswered questions. For example, there was plenty of social media footage seemingly showing the helicopter apparently falling out of the

sky and so what is going to happen next is that authorities are going to try to understand what exactly happened. Where did this helicopter take off from? Where was it headed to? And why did it seemingly fail? There were drones flying overhead trying to get answers to those questions. Michelle Flurry. Thousands of people in the Dominican Republic have attended the funeral of the much-loved singer Ruby Perez to pay their last respects. He died when the Ruth of the Nightclub where he was performing collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday. More than 220 people are now known to have died in the tragedy of the Jet Set Club in the capital Santo Domingo.

The singer's daughter, Zulinka Perez, who was performing with him when the accident happened but was saved by her husband, sang during her father's funeral at the National Theatre building. While rescue workers have now ended their search for survivors after days of scouring through huge mounds of rubble, Will Grant reports from Santo Domingo. With the number of dead from the nightclub collapse now well over 200, the Dominican authorities have accepted the inevitable. The search and rescue teams have pulled out of the site and the heavy machinery has moved in. No one had been pulled out alive from the nightclub since Tuesday afternoon, said the director of the Centre of Emergency Operations,

Juan Manuel Mendes, and the operation itself has now focused on recovering victims' bodies rather than looking for more survivors. The rescuers had exhausted all reasonable possibilities, he said. Most of the family members of the missing, who were gathered at the site waiting for news, have now gone home after identifying their relatives' bodies in a makeshift morgue. Questions over the cause of the collapse will now ramp up, and the owner of the venue flew into the Dominican Republic from the United States to cooperate further with the investigation. The country is in a period of national mourning over what is the worst accident of its kind in recent Dominican history. Will Grant. It's been described as the biggest luxury deal of the year. The Italian luxury

fashion house Prada has agreed to buy a rival company, Versace. The billion dollar deal will unite two of Italy's biggest brands for the first time. And it comes just weeks after Donatella Versace stepped down as head of the company that bears her name after nearly three decades at the helm following the murder of her brother Gianni. Charlotte Edwards reports. The finale of the Winterfall fashion show in Milan as Donatella Versace appeared. Stepping out onto the catwalk in her high platform boots to take the applause. It was to be her last appearance in charge of the Italian fashion brand. Just a couple of weeks later on March 13th, she said she was stepping down from her creative director role at the luxury brand after nearly 30 years.

She had taken over from her brother after he was murdered in 1997, the last victim of a bizarre set of murders by a serial killer who killed himself a few days later. The brand became a symbol of Hollywood luxury and extravagance, best known for its imaginative patterns, bold colors, and luxurious materials. Under Donna Teller's leadership, the Versace brand underwent a renaissance despite no formal fashion training. It regained its position in the global market thanks in part to collaborations with musicians and celebrities. Versace once again became a symbol of the fashion world and reclaimed its luxury status. But now she'll take up a new role as the Chief Brand Ambassador instead of Creative Director. Instead in comes another major fashion brand, the Prada Group, which already owns several

other designer labels including Miu Miu and luxury footwear brand Churches. They had in fact began to negotiate with Versace in February this year. And the deal was almost derailed by Donald Trump's announcement of reciprocal tariffs on US trade partners, with companies facing higher costs to source materials. But today, the two Italian designers announced a deal with an estimated value of $1.36 billion. The deal comes as Versace has been operating at a loss amid a slowdown in demand for luxury fashion worldwide. Prado will be buying Versace from its current owners Capri Holdings, who paid almost a billion

dollars more for Versace in 2018. But the union of Prado and Versace brings together two major Italian brands, creating a multi-billion dollar luxury fashion group to compete with the likes of French luxury fashion conglomerates LVMH and Cairing. Charlotte Edwards. Still to come. We noticed that there were these furry bindings and so people have said they were deer, people have said they were pig and so you can imagine our surprise when we ran the analysis. It was? What's going on? We find out what the hairy books found in a French monastery were made of. Unless you've been hiding under a very large pixelated rock,

you've probably heard of Minecraft. It's the best-selling video game of all time, and the franchise's first feature film is in cinemas now. But how much do you know about the game's creator, software developer Marcus Persson? Find out about the man behind Minecraft on Good, Bad, Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, motives, and money of some of the world's richest individuals.

Good, Bad, Billion billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News podcast. Gaza is probably one of the most crowded strips of land anywhere in the world. One reason why there have been so many deaths since Israel responded to the unprecedented Hamas attacks a year and a half ago as it accuses the militant group of hiding behind civilians. Now Israel's defense

minister Israel Katz has said one of Gaza's main cities, Rafa, will become part of an expanded buffer zone in the south of the Strip. The IDF is eliminating terrorists, locating and thwarting terrorist infrastructures and dismembering the Gaza Strip, even in places like the Morag Corridor where we have not operated to date. The population of Gaza is being evacuated from the fighting zones. The Moray corridor separates the Gaza Strip between Khan Yunis and Ra'far. Meanwhile, in Israel itself, the military says it will dismiss reservists who signed a letter demanding that the return of Israeli hostages should be prioritised over fighting

Hamas. The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said their criticism was unforgivable. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Gary O'Donoghue, is following these developments. He began by telling me why Israel was expanding its buffer zone in southern Gaza to include Ra'far. Well it's doing it for a few reasons. It believes that the more it squeezes Hamas inside Gaza, the more it expands the parts of Gaza that Israel controls, the more pressure it puts on Hamas to in particular release the hostages and of course to reduce its influence over the population. So that's one reason. Another

reason it's doing it is that it really wants to locate the civilian population nearer to the coast and it looks as if Israel wants to take over the delivery and distribution of any aid effort. Now no aid has been going into Gaza for more than a month now. There is talk about restarting that aid quite soon, possibly even next week. And what Israel wants to do is have control over that, take it out of the hands of Hamas for a start who they accuse of stealing the fuel and the food, using it for its own purposes to pay its fighters etc. and also to bypass the aid agencies which Israel deeply mistrusts. So what has been the reaction to this?

It's complicated the reaction because you know there are clearly a majority of people in Israel that support this war. They support the elimination of Ham, because there are clearly a majority of people in Israel that support this war. They support the elimination of Hamas. But there are lots of people who are also very, very angry that Israel has failed to bring all the hostages home and that Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to bring all the hostages home. So there are sort of competing feelings within Israelis' minds about this. And certainly some believe that continuing the war, continuing to fight Hamas, makes that process of bringing the 59 remaining hostages, many of them already dead, bring

them back home to their families. Danielle Pletka And a sign of that anger is this letter that's been signed by reservists, but there's been a very strong response from the Israeli prime minister and the military. Yes, these are reservist pilots. Much of the air force is manned by reservist pilots. A lot of the people who have signed this letter are retired, but some aren't. Some are still active reservists, and they have said the priority should be bringing the hostages home, not prosecuting the war, and they accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of going back to war for political

reasons. And those who are still on active reserve duties are going to be fired as a result of this. Gary O'Donoghue in Jerusalem. Britain is to provide Ukraine with another 450 million dollars in military support with the money to be spent on new drones and to repair armored vehicles. The announcement was made as the UK and Germany prepared to chair the latest meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels on Friday. Until recently, it had been led by the United States.

On Thursday, Britain and France chaired a meeting of 30 nations about providing long-term security guarantees to Ukraine if a ceasefire is agreed. Here's our defence correspondent, Jonathan Beale. The Trump administration's relinquished US leadership of the contact group set up three years ago to provide Ukraine with military support. The US defence secretary will not even attend this latest meeting. Nor was there any US representation at yesterday's coalition of the willing, a

group of 30 nations led by the UK and France discussing long term security guarantees for Ukraine if there's a ceasefire. The British defence secretary John Healy said plans to send a reassurance force were well developed and substantial, but he still gave no details of which countries were willing to commit boots on the ground or how many troops would be needed. Some nations attending were still unclear about what it might involve. This is also about sending signals, not least to Washington, that European countries are willing to continue their support for Ukraine while President Trump tries to broker a ceasefire.

Jonathan Beale, a UN report says that the Taliban's morality police in Afghanistan have been detaining men and their barbers under new laws over non-compliant hairstyles and beard lengths. Here's Mike Thompson. It seems no area of everyday life is beyond regulation for the Taliban's Ministry of Vitan Virtue. Under laws that came into effect six months ago, having the wrong hairstyle or length of beard is an offence. The UN report says transgressors are being detained along with their barbers. Skipping prayers at the mosque is also landing men in trouble. Women who were already barred

from education and work are now banned from public speaking and must cover their faces. A UN official said the laws provided a distressing vision for the country's future. The Taliban has rejected the criticism. Mike Thompson, now let's take you to Kenya. No drama! No drama! No drama! No drama!

No drama! Where a national high school drama competition has been overshadowed by a drama of its own. Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd that had gathered to watch a play set in a fictional kingdom where young people have lost faith in their leaders. The play, called Echoes of War, features battles with the police and has drawn parallels with protests last year in which young Kenyans took to the streets to demonstrate against tax rises. Our reporter in Nairobi, Anita Nkongge, told us more. The area where the National Drama Festival was going to take place had heavy police presence.

And journalists and the public who wanted to view the drama festival, particularly the play under controversy, Echoes of War, had gathered. But the police cordoned them off and shot out tear gas, dispersing these crowds. Students unfortunately got in the way of this as they were entering the school where the play was taking place. And what essentially happened was that audience members were banned from viewing the play, which is called Echoes of War. And the students who had decided to perform it stood up on stage, sang the national anthem and then proceeded to announce that they were not going to perform the play because their director was missing

and at the time he was arrested. And why are the authorities so determined to stop people watching this play? There are many schools that have been performing but this particular school, Butaria Girls School, they seem to have been going through a lot of frustrations with this play. So for example last week there was a court order that had to be given allowing them to perform their play during the national festival. Initially it had been banned and some say it's because they believe that the play is a reflection of what is currently happening in the Kenan government and is critiquing the president and the government on how they're dealing with the nation. There have been some assumptions that because of how popular this play has been and how

well the students were performing it, that had they won or if they were to win this national competition, they would then have to perform it at State House in front of the president. And that could be potentially another reason why it seems that they have been frustrated consistently. And some people are comparing the plot of the play to those protests last year against tax rises. Precisely. So they're drawing parallels with it. For example, the social injustice, the trying to silence people who want to speak out, all things that we've seen, and as well

as proposed tax increases. That was exactly what was happening last year. And just remind us about those protests last year. Generation Z, that's the youth of today right now, took to the streets in Kenya protesting what they were saying was a taxation bill that they were saying would cause issues, high cost of living amongst many other issues that taxes would naturally bring. But what transpired then was that the protests turned violent. We saw a lot of police teargassing protesters who were saying that they were peaceful. We saw some protesters barging into parliament.

And then after that, there were more protests about the police brutality. And we saw then, and we began to see people getting abducted. The effects of what happened last year is still very prevalent in Kenya. It's still a discussion. People are still worried about the direction the government is taking the country. Anita Nkongay in Nairobi. They're known as the hairy books

because their covers have hairs on them. And now researchers analyzing medieval tomes found in a monastery in France have made a startling discovery. Imogen Rogers takes up the story. The 12th and 13th century books were found at the Cistercian monastery, Clairvaux Abbey, and its daughter monasteries in northeastern France. Matthew Collins, a professor at the University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen,

was one of a group of researchers that analysed volumes of the books. He told us what he found on 43 of them. We noticed that there were these furry bindings and so people have said they were deer, people have said they were pig. We were pretty sure they were deer, we'd analysed deer before. And so you can imagine our surprise when we ran the analysis, it was the proteins first and it didn't match with anything. It was like, what? What's going on? So what we then did is we generated protein sequence data for seals, and lo and behold, they were seal skin. Apparently, the use of seal skin for manuscript covers was common in Scandinavian countries and in Ireland. However, its use in France was surprising to the researchers because the

monasteries were not on the sea. They were inland and even on the French coast there was no evidence of any seals in the Middle Ages. Researchers say the monasteries may have had access to seal skin because they encountered the traders from Scandinavia. Elodie Levesque was another researcher on the project and says a discovery of the hairy books made of seal skin shows how extensive the medieval trade network was. We can actually know a lot about the hairy books made of seal skin shows how extensive the medieval trade network was. We can actually know a lot about the trade and like the fact that monks were actually connected to the world, that they had connections with the north and that the skins were coming from all the trade routes. You can say it's seal but you can't necessarily say which one

but bearded seal is one that you can actually recognise and the bearded seal was definitely not in Europe at the time. So that's another proof that the skins were coming from far away. Cistercians are known for white clothing and objects and therefore seal skin was probably chosen because of its light grey or white colour. The monks may have not known that they were using seal skin at the time as seals were rarely depicted in medieval art. And that report was by Imogen Rogers. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcasts.bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon, the producer of The McSheffrey, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil. Until next time, goodbye. In the fall of 2001, while Americans were still grappling with the horror of September 11th, envelopes started showing up at media outlets and government buildings filled with a white lethal powder,

anthrax. But what's strange is if you ask people now what happened with that story, almost no one knows. It's like the whole thing just disappeared. Who mailed those letters? Do you know? From Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and CBC podcasts, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Available now.