Reuters World News - Trump's tariff 'medicine', market spasms, Netanyahu and measles

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Donald Trump has warned foreign governments they would have to pay "a lot of money" to lift sweeping tariffs, delivering more pain for global financial markets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he hopes Trump will ease tariffs imposed on Israel when the two meet in Washington. A second child with measles has died in Texas, in an outbreak that has resulted in nearly 500 cases and has spread across 22 states. Find our recommended read on a new discovery in the Sahara desert here. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Find the latest Reuters Econ World podcast 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 describes his tariffs as medicine, and they're injecting turmoil into global markets. Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C. today, as the offensive in Gaza continues. And another death in the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas. It's Monday, April 7th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. And I'm Christopher Wall Jasper in Chicago. US President Donald Trump has told foreign governments

they'll have to pay a lot of money to lift his sweeping tariffs. I don't want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. With the president digging in on his trade plans, investors are running for cover. It's triggering more carnage across global financial markets. Kamal Krimmins is here with the latest. stocks are sinking across the board. Investors are panicking about the risk of recession from these tariffs and it's leaving a trail of destruction on equity markets. We've already seen trillions of dollars in market value gone up in smoke and the hits keep coming. Taiwan's stocks fell 10%. That's their

biggest one-day fall on record and US equity futures are diving. Dealers are increasingly worried that these kind of drops could force investors to dump profitable assets to cover their losses, leading to a kind of self-fulfilling fire sale. We've already seen the price of gold drop as investors dump bullion to cover losses on other trades. And some of Wall Street's biggest names, including people who've supported Trump,

have been calling on the president to pause or reverse his tariff plan. Markets are now implying a 50-50 chance the Fed could cut rates as early as next month. That's despite Chair Powell saying last week that the central bank was in no hurry to move. Dozens of nations have reached out to the Trump administration in the last few days, looking to negotiate down those newly levied tariffs.

Chris called up our White House reporter, Trevor Honeycutt, who was in West Palm Beach, Florida, with the president over the weekend to understand the Trump administration's response. There have been some White House officials who have said that the scope for negotiation here is fairly limited, but we've also heard from people like the president's economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, almost bragging that there are 50 countries that want. to have talks with the United States and this could be a negotiation. And so all of these countries right now are trying to figure out exactly what it is that they can offer. That'll make the pain stop. And it seems like there have been a few different strategies, right? The European Union,

for instance, has promised to remain united against these tariffs, while Taiwan has lowered trade barriers and promised more U.S. investment hoping to achieve zero tariffs. How are the these varying approaches being viewed. Yeah, so you're right. There's been a whole range of different strategy. You've seen China hit back with pretty severe countermeasures. And then you've had its next door neighbor India decide, hey, you know, what, we're going to continue along the path of negotiating a new trade deal.

And so there are kind of a range of strategies here. And Trump has made clear that his preference is for countries not to retaliate and to come to the administration with offers in hand. Do we have a sense yet if consumers have begun to feel the effects of these tariffs or when they might? So this is the really big question right now because a lot of where the focus has been the pain that's happened in financial markets. And the next big shoe to drop is the pain that consumers themselves will feel. Do prices start to rise dramatically across the board for big ticket items, for things that people see in the grocery store every day. and so we're going to be looking for that for the next several weeks and see if that has a big impact on the economy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C. today. The first foreign leader to meet with President Trump since the sweeping tariffs were announced last week. The U.S.'s 17% tariffs on Israel are likely to be on an already full agenda after Netanyahu's government made a move last week to remove all tariffs on U.S. goods. Bureau Chief James McKenzie has been looking into what else the Prime Minister might bring to the table. He's not going to have much room to play with on the purely economic side of things, but I guess this visit will give him an opportunity to demonstrate the closeness of these countries, and also perhaps if the administration is so minded, will give them an opportunity to reduce these tariffs and to show what can be done when countries,

come in the right spirit to Washington and seek to show your goodwill, you can achieve a reduction in the tariffs. What might be discussed around the renewed fighting in Gaza and the fate of the remaining hostages? That's not clear. Of course, the war in Gaza has resumed at quite sort of high intensity. There's no sign of any progress on agreeing any kind of extension to the ceasefire deal that was agreed in January under the guidance of Trump's special envoy. Steve Whitkoff, the Israeli position is now essentially that Hamas must give up all the hostages in order for the campaign to end. The Israeli military has provided new details on the killing of 15 emergency workers

near the southern Gaza city of Rafa last month. It first said soldiers had opened fire because the vehicles had approached their position suspiciously in the dark, without lights or markings. But video found on the mobile phone of one of the dead has contradicted that. Israel now says the person who gave the initial account was mistaken and that the investigation is ongoing. Atlanta, Georgia, and one of more than a thousand demonstrations against Donald Trump and Elon Musk over the weekend.

The hands-off protests saw people express anger at the recent government cuts and what they see as an expansion of presidential authority. An eight-year-old girl has died in Texas from the measles. The second death in the state as an outbreak there now reaches 500 cases and is spreading to even more states. Our U.S. healthcare editor Carolyn Humor has been looking into the spread and the federal response. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr., since he has come in and taken his job at the end of January, He has not responded to this measles outbreak in the way that public health officials expected. From the beginning after the first child died, he said that measles outbreaks such as this are ordinary.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican as well from Louisiana, himself a physician, is somebody who put a lot of pressure on Kennedy during his confirmation hearing. And last week, he called him to come before the Senate Health Committee. and talk about his layoff plan for the U.S. health agencies. And also on Sunday, Cassidy himself posted on X that he wanted to see some strong response to the measles outbreak, that he wanted to see public health officials. He did not say Kennedy, but public health officials, making very clear that vaccination for measles is the best response.

And then this weekend, Kennedy actually got very close to this current outbreak, when we learned that he attended the funeral of the child who died last week? Kennedy attending a funeral of a child who has died from measles is a little unusual. HHS didn't have a comment. Kennedy himself did not discuss his whereabouts until we saw the post late on Sunday. If you want to hear more about the state of federal health care programs under President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Listen to this weekend special episode where we go deep on the cuts to health and human services and how it might impact health care in America.

We'll post a link in the show notes. Our recommended read today focuses on one of the most arid and desolate places on earth. We're in the Sahara Desert to look at a fascinating DNA discovery. Tests on the remains of two individuals who lived in North Africa about 7,000 years ago reveal that it was home to a mysterious lineage of people isolated from the outside world. There's a link for story in the pod description. 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.