Reuters World News - Hollywood tariffs, the Trump effect in global elections, 'Diddy' trial and the Fed

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump orders 100% tariffs on foreign-made movies to save “dying” Hollywood. We look at the Trump factor in global elections after Australia’s Anthony Albanese wins a second term as prime minister on an anti-Trump wave. What to expect from the Sean "P. Diddy" Combs sex trafficking trial. Plus, this week's Fed meeting. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠here⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠here⁠. Find the Recommended Read ⁠here⁠. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Trump's plan to tax Hollywood movies made outside the United States. The Trump effect comes for Australia's election. What's the impact in Europe? Jury selection in the Diddy Trial starts today. Plus, what to expect from this week's Fed meeting? It's Monday, May 5th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday.

I'm Jonah Green in New York. And I'm Carmel Crimmons. in Dublin. U.S. President Donald Trump has declared a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the United States. The plan, announced in a social media post, is light on detail. But Trump says the American movie industry is dying a very fast death due to the incentives offered by other countries. Movie and TV production has been shifting away from Hollywood for years in favor of locations with tax incentives that make filming cheaper. In 2020, about half of spending by US producers on big-budget movie and TV projects went outside the US.

President Trump says he's unsure whether people in the US are entitled to due process rights guaranteed in the US Constitution. Trump's comments in an interview on NBC come as his administration pushes aggressively to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and other non-citizens. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet has voted to scale up the offensive against Hamas and Gaza to the point of seizing the entire enclave and holding its territories. That's according to an Israeli official,

a report by Israel's public broadcaster, Kahn, said the new plan was gradual and would take months, with forces focusing first on one area of the battered enclave. President Trump says his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, is a frontrunner to replace Mike Walsz as national security advisor. I think he sort of indirectly already has that job. You understand? Trump told reporters on Air Force One

that he expected to fill the job within about six months. Walsh was removed from the role last week, and it's currently being filled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on an interim basis. An attempted bomb attack on a Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro has been thwarted by Brazilian police. The Free Concert drew more than 2 million people to Copacabana Beach. Authorities say the plot includes improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails and was from a group promoting hate speech and the radicalization of teenagers.

And finally, President Trump says he wants federal law enforcement agencies to work on restoring Alcatraz as a functioning maximum security prison. The federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closed in 1963, and it's now one of the city's most popular tourist destinations. Policymakers from the Federal Reserve are set to meet this week amid enormous uncertainty over where the U.S. economy is headed. Reporter Anne Safier lays out what to expect. The Fed is going to sit tight, and the reason for it is simple.

We just don't know enough about how the economy is going to react to the tariffs yet. We saw the GDP contract last quarter. We saw the labor market is holding up. pretty well. We've seen prices that have been actually still coming down toward the 2% inflation target. But all of this kind of happened in the rearview mirror before the tariffs really started to be announced and then rolled back and then jacked up and we don't really know what's going to happen. And so the Fed needs to wait and see. I think it's one of those meetings where it looks really chill on the outside. Everyone knows they're not going to cut rates.

And when they come out on Wednesday, they're going to say we didn't cut rates. But on the inside, there's going to be a lot of debate going on. What is the impact of the tariffs? What's it going to do to inflation? What's it going to do to the economy? So there's going to be a lot going on around that table where they're discussing that we won't see. And we won't really know about for a few months. Australia's Anthony Albanese claimed a historic second term as prime minister over the weekend.

In this time of global uncertainty, Australians have chosen optimism and determination. It was a dramatic comeback that was fueled by voters' concerns about the influence of U.S. President Donald Trump. Just like we saw in the recent Canadian election, Trump's trade war shifted voter sentiment away from concerns about the cost of living. But in Romania, a hard right leader has scored a resounding first round victory in presidential. elections seen as a test of the rise of Trump-style nationalism in Europe. Mark Bendike is our global managing editor. Mark, a few months ago, Western leaders were being punished for inflation, but we have a few examples now where the story has changed largely because of the U.S. president. Well, certainly in the last two, John, if you look at Canada and Australia,

it very clearly changed the conversation, particularly after the blitz of tariffs. I think no more so than Canada. Certainly Trump wasn't talking about making Australia the 51st state. The tariff war was nowhere near as severe as it is with Canada, but it did change the conversation. And there were remarks that were made on the conservative side, like Make Australia Great Again, which clearly rankled with the electorate and the conservative leader did try and put some distance between himself and Donald Trump, I think. But to be sure, despite Canada and Australia, what we're seeing in Europe is slightly different, of course. How so?

So we had elections, local elections in the UK, and we saw the far right party or the anti-immigration party of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, do particularly well. And of course, we've got Poland coming up in, I think it's less than two weeks. We have a pro-Trump, if you like, politician there who's just last week met the US president in the White House. So we're seeing some sort of mixed signals, but I think the one thread you can draw through it is although Trump changed the conversation in many places, there is still this anti-incumbency, this anger over cost of living, and particularly among young voters, I think, in many places,

at least, particularly in the West, the unaffordability of housing, which, you know, you see in Australia, you see in Canada, you see in Europe, you see in the UK. So there's a lot more fireworks to come, but certainly the Trump effect was real, but how long-lasting it is and how widespread. I think the jury's out. Jury selection begins today in Sean Diddy Combs' sex trafficking trial. The hip-hop mogul rejected a plea deal last week and has pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges. Legal reporter Jack Queen is here with everything you need to know. I think the most important thing for people to understand is just the gravity of the charges here.

Mr. Combs is accused of this two-decade racketeering in sex trafficking conspiracy, and along the way, a lot of violent incidents. allegedly perpetrated by Mr. Combs. I mean, we're talking about allegedly kidnapping people at gunpoint. Even arson, he's accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail into the top of someone's car. These counts carry really hefty penalties. Racketeering is up to 25 years and sex trafficking. He could face a life sentence potentially. Now, life sentence probably isn't likely, but nonetheless, he's 55 years old. And so a multi-decade prison sentence could be sort of the rest of his life. There are four accusers in this case, and three of them are going to,

to be testifying under pseudonyms to protect our privacy. One of them, Mr. Combs's ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, is going to testify under her real name. It's possible that Mr. Combs testifies himself, although defense attorneys usually advise their clients not to do that because it's risky. It exposes them to cross-examination by prosecutors, which can be quite grueling. Do we have a preview of what Didi's defense is going to look like? So Mr. Combs' attorneys have signaled that they plan to argue that his accusers had financial incentives to make these claims. And that sort of echoes his defense in these more than 50 civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault that he faces. You know, another thing his defense lawyers have said

in court is that this was just his swinger lifestyle and that there's nothing illegal about that. Because, again, this all sort of centers on what prosecutors say were called freak-offs, these rowdy sex parties that Mr. Combs would allegedly host. And the prosecutors allege that Mr. Combs drugged a lot of the people who participated. And these parties where the freak-offs allegedly happened were at one point the hottest ticket in the entertainment business. And so one thing that people will be watching for is if some big names come up. In Repsol, you give the double of ahorro in your repostages. Also, extend them the promotion until the 3th of May. Because if you're of Waelet,

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on Repsol. P.Sol with total the energy. And for today's recommended read, we take you to a former fish

market in Barcelona, where archaeologists have dug up a medieval shipwreck. The vessel may have sunk about ago, and its timbers had been preserved by the damp sand that covered it. There's a link to the story and some great images of the dig in the show notes. For more on any of the stories from today,

check out reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.