The Headlines - Trump’s New Plan for Social Security Death List, and China’s Counterattack on Tariffs

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Plus, Hollywood stunts in the spotlight. On Today’s Episode:China Raises Tariffs on U.S. Imports to 125%, by Alexandra StevensonDeepening Trade Fight With China Poses New Threat to U.S. Farmers, by Alan RappeportPressuring Migrants to ‘Self-Deport,’ White House Moves to Cancel Social Security Numbers, by Alexandra Berzon, Hamed Aleaziz, Nicholas Nehamas, Ryan Mac and Tara Siegel BernardSupreme Court Sides With Wrongly Deported Migrant, by Adam LiptakWhy Iran’s Supreme Leader Came Around to Nuclear Talks With the U.S., by Farnaz FassihiSearch Ends for Victims in Dominican Republic Collapse That Killed 221, by Hogla Enecia Pérez and Frances RoblesStunt Design Will Be Honored at the Academy Awards, by Nicole SperlingTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, April 11th. Here's what we're covering. The chaos that President Trump's tariffs unleashed on the stock market is not over yet. A day after the biggest rally since 2008, stocks resuming their sell-off. Despite initially soaring after Trump said he was pausing most of his tariffs, stocks then tumbled again yesterday. You can see

the big red arrows there for the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 as well, each down by at least 4%. It's a sign that investors are still unnerved by all of the back and forth, and that they're concerned about a big part of Trump's trade war that he hasn't backed down from, his standoff with China. The president's now pushed tariffs on China to 145 percent, while he's been repeating his claim that the country's ripping off the U.S. And China has retaliated with its own steep surcharges that have now reached 125 percent. They can raise their tariffs, but so what? Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rushed off the escalating tariffs this week, saying

China will be the one to lose out. No one wins in a war, but it's proportionality and the proportionality for the Chinese is going to be much worse. The now sky-high tariffs will likely lead to higher prices on the hundreds of billions of dollars of goods the U.S. imports from China. And China's tariffs, in turn, could be a huge blow to U.S. farmers, many of whom are in red states, potentially hitting voters who helped elect the president. China is America's largest foreign market for agriculture.

During Trump's trade war with China, in his first term, American farmers growing crops like soybeans and corn lost billions of dollars in revenue. And ultimately, Trump handed out massive subsidies to try and stabilize the situation. The Times has learned about an extraordinary and unorthodox new tactic the Trump administration is deploying in its crackdown on immigration. For years, the federal government has given Social Security numbers to migrants who have temporary permission to live in the U.S.

That's allowed them to work and in some cases to receive benefits. But this week, the Social Security Administration started moving thousands of migrants to its so-called death list, the record it keeps of people who are supposed to be deceased and thus shouldn't get any benefits. To do that, the agencies even had to enter fake dates of death for the migrants. That data often then gets shared with banks and other financial institutions. The head of the agency told staff

that they were making this move because he wants the migrants' financial lives to be quote, terminated. Our reporting is showing that there's an aim here from the government that's pretty explicit, which is about President Trump's edict to try to get people to self-deport.

The idea is that if you make their lives difficult enough, you make it clear that they're not going to be able to get access to their banks, their mortgages are going to cancel, their landlords might evict them, they're all kinds of problems they're going to have. It's really to scare people and to convince people to leave. My colleague Alexandra Berzon is on the team that broke the story. The administration claims that the first group of people that it's added to the death list are convicted criminals or suspected terrorists. But Alexandra says that group includes a 13-year-old boy and seven other minors,

raising concerns about how carefully the names were selected. Every year there are already mistakes that are made and people mistakenly end up on this list and it can be an incredible difficulty to try to get off of it and really upend a person's life. Now add to that more possibility, you could end up with American citizens or immigrants who are not intended to be on the list and it could really wreak incredible financial havoc

and disruption to people's lives. In other immigration news, the Supreme Court has sided with the man that the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. The justices unanimously said that the government needs to take steps to bring him home, though they didn't go so far as to order that he be brought back immediately, since they said there are unresolved questions about the role the courts can play in foreign affairs.

This means for the moment, his return is still up in the air. Do you have any idea what's happening for him or to him right now? Have you had any contact? Nothing. In an interview on MSNBC earlier this week, the man's wife rejected the government's claims that her husband is a violent gang member. And she said she'll keep fighting to bring him back to the U.S.

I want to know when they will bring him back. Because my kids ask, when is he coming? And I don't have an answer. In the Middle East this weekend, American officials will sit down for talks with Iran as they try and rein in the country's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. It's the first time both sides will engage in nuclear talks since 2018, when President Trump pulled the U.S. out of a previous agreement. Under that deal, the U.S. had dropped some of its economic sanctions against Iran in

exchange for limits on the country's stockpile of nuclear material. After that, relations between the two countries devolved. Iran raced forward with its nuclear program, and the U.S. put some of its crippling sanctions back in place. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the last word in all state matters, has said he really doesn't trust the United States. He's called negotiations with the U.S. idiotic and unwise, but he really doesn't have a choice. For an auspice, he covers Iran for the times. He conceded to talks because Iran is facing a cascade of crises. There's a shortage of

energy, there's power cuts, the shortage of water, the economy is tanking, the currency is plunging. There's widespread discontent among the population. And in order to be able to resolve all their problems, they need to have sanctions relief and they need to negotiate with the United States. The other major incentive for Iran and Mr. Khamenei to agree to talks is that they understand that if they don't negotiate, there's also the threat of war. President Trump and Israel have both clearly said that if negotiations fail, they will have to stop Iran's advancement in its nuclear program with military strikes.

And agreeing to come to talks is one way to try to avert that. Farnaz says that the two countries are far apart as they head into the talks this weekend. Trump has said Iran can't be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. But a former negotiator for Iran told the Times that any push to fully shut down the country's nuclear program would be a, quote, deal breaker. In the Dominican Republic, authorities announced they have ended their search for victims in the rubble of a collapsed nightclub there. The roof of Jetset, one of the most popular clubs in the country's capital city, came crashing down after midnight on Tuesday during a concert. And the head of the fire department there

said some of the rescue workers stayed on site for 53 hours straight, digging through the debris. By the time they ended their search yesterday, the death toll had climbed to 221. The club had been a go-to destination for live music for decades, popular with politicians, athletes, and bankers. A Dominican governor died in the collapse, as did two former Major League Baseball players, and the celebrated Marengue singer who was performing, Rubi Perez. The tragedy has overwhelmed the local morgue. Some family members told the Times they spent days camped out there trying to claim their loved ones. The morgue said it has identified most of the victims and is, quote, working tirelessly to finish the process.

And finally, for every jaw-dropping car crash and fight scene and motorcycle flying off a cliff in the movies, there's a whole stunt team behind it. Now the Academy Awards will recognize those unsung heroes who've mastered exactly how to get lit on fire and make it look good. Starting with movies released in 2027, there will be a new Oscars category for achievement in stunt design. For people in the industry, it's a long time coming.

Ryan Gosling called out the lack of recognition that stunt teams get at the premiere of his movie Fall Guy last year, in which he plays a stunt man. There's this sort of accepted dynamic where they come on set, they do all the cool stuff, they risk everything, and then they disappear into the shadows.

And we all pretend as though they were never there. At the time, Gosling joked that the movie was basically a giant campaign to get the Oscars to recognize stunts. All of the details about eligibility and how exactly the stunt award will work haven't been released yet. But it's not the only change coming to the Oscars. Next year, the Academy will give out its first-ever award for casting for the people who pulled

together a film's ensemble. That will be the first new category for the awards in 20 years. Those are the headlines. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Alyssa Moxley, Zoe Murphy, Paula Schuman, and Chris Wood. The headlines will be back on Monday.