NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-04-2025 6PM EDT

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

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Singapore is one of the busiest cities in the world, but biologist Philip Johns is fascinated by a different inhabitant on the island, otters. At rush hour downtown, the otters would swim toward each other and there are literally tens of thousands of people who are on their way to work. How ideas, emotions, and creatures coexist. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Stocks in the U.S. were in a free fall for a second stray day today as a

defiant President Donald Trump continues to push retaliatory tariffs against much of the world. The Dow fell more than 2000 points for just the fourth time in history. The broader market suffered even higher percentage point losses. Speaking today to the Society for Advancing Business, Editing and Writing, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is taking a wait-and-see approach. We've taken a step back and we're watching to see what the policies turn out to be and the ways in which they will affect the economy, and then we'll be able to act.

Fortunately, our policy stance is in a good place for us to do that. President Trump, meanwhile, has called on the Fed to take some action, though most economists are calling the current market plunge self-inflicted and outside the Fed's mandate of full employment and moderate inflation. John, meanwhile, hitting back at the U.S. after the Trump administration's latest round of tariffs, NPR's John Rewich reports Beijing will impose tit-for-tat tariffs on U.S. goods and take several other countermeasures. In coordinated statements, government ministries laid out the details of China's retaliation, which sharply escalates the trade war between the world's two biggest economies. The finance ministry will impose a 34 percent tariff on all U.S. imports.

That's the same rate that the Trump administration imposed on China during Wednesday's so-called Liberation Day global tariff blitz. China's tariffs take effect on April 10th. The Ministry of Commerce is adding 16 US entities to an export control list and 11 to a so-called unreliable entities list, effectively blacklisting them. It also said it's imposing export controls on a handful of rare earth minerals, making it harder for American companies to buy them. And China's Customs Department is suspending farm product import qualifications for several American companies. John Ruch, NPR News, Beijing. President Trump says he'll be signing an executive order to postpone the TikTok ban by 75 days.

As NPR's Bobby Allen explains, the news comes as a surprise to long time TikTok watchers. White House negotiators were all set to announce the details of a TikTok deal, but it never happened. Behind the scenes talks evolved into chaos. Among the factors that complicated the plan was Trump's firing of several National Security Council officials. One of them was running the TikTok deal. With Trump delaying the ban's start date, the clock on the deal to take over the China-based app has been reset.

Under a federal law congress passed last year, TikTok is technically operating illegally in the U.S. with its ties to Beijing. But the Trump administration says it will continue not enforcing the law for another two and a half months. Bobby Allen in PR News. Some areas of the Midwest and the South are facing the possibility of still more torrential rains as well as the threat of additional flash flooding. New storms today coming even as many communities there are still reeling from severe tornadoes

that leveled buildings and claimed lives. Forecasters say the storms have been ravaging that part of the country. Just keep coming. You're listening to NPR. Another defection at the Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson says he's leaving the paper, saying his departure is due in part to policy changes implemented by owner Jeff Bezos. The billionaire said he wants the opinion section of the newspaper to focus on issues of personal liberties and the free market. The 71-year-old Robinson says the change encouraged him to move on. Last month columnist Ruth Marcus

resigned after the paper did not run a column she wrote criticizing the move by Bezos. A 97-year-old giant Galapagos tortoise in Philadelphia has become a mother for the first time. As Peter Crimmins of Member Station WHYY, reports the new baby tortoises are a critically endangered species. The four hatchlings are Western Santa Cruz Island Galapagos tortoises. The Philadelphia Zoo's Lauren Augustine says there may be more on the way.

Baby tortoises are adorable. Our tortoises here are about the size of a tennis ball right now. The parents are Abrazo and Mommy, each approaching 100 years old. Mommy has been in the Philadelphia Zoo for 93 years, captured wild in 1932. Augustine says that makes her genes extremely rare. The animals that come from the wild we make the assumption that they're unrelated to the other animals in our population and so genetically she is unique. So she's

incredibly important. There are 44 Western Santa Cruz tortoises in captivity and only a few hundred in the wild. For NPR News, I'm Peter Krimins in Philadelphia. Critical futures prices plunged along with stocks mid-mounting tariff concerns oiled down nearly $5 a barrel to $61.99 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.