--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, April 3rd.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Good morning. President Trump's announcement of universal tariffs is a major blow to the world economy. Across the globe this morning, there's shock, confusion and vows of retaliation as world leaders respond to President Trump's dramatic new tariffs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Let's be clear-eyed about the immense consequences. The global economy will massively suffer. Uncertainty will spiral. And the tariffs will also hurt consumers around the world.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ursula von der Leyen, a top European Union official, didn't even wait for the sun to come up before condemning the tariffs. At a 5 a.m. news conference, she said Europe is already preparing countermeasures. If you take on one of us, you take on all of us.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump announced the tariffs against the EU and nearly all of America's other trading partners yesterday afternoon at the White House. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. He framed the issue as a national emergency, claiming America is being taken advantage of. Foreign leaders have stolen our jobs. Foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories. And foreign scavengers have torn apart our once-beautiful American dream.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The tariffs will take effect starting this weekend. There will be a baseline 10 percent surcharge on nearly all products imported into the U.S., though products from some countries will face rates closer to 50 percent.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: While some economists say that Trump is fundamentally right, that some of America's trade relationships have been uneven. Many warned that these kinds of broad tariffs will mean higher costs for American consumers. Everything from smartphones to sneakers to air conditioners could get more expensive as the tariffs kick in.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There was also immediate fallout. The value of the U.S. dollar slumped even as Trump was announcing his plan. And this morning the stock markets in Europe and Asia have dropped sharply over fears about the disruption the tariffs will cause.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's like complete shock. Like the words that people have been using when I asked them are shell shock, madness. Everyone's just trying to get their hands around it. Like there's just like a ton of emergency meetings that are happening at the government and corporate level.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Damien Cave covers global affairs for The Times. Trump is basically trying to redraw the map of the global economy, and he's pitching it as something that will basically bring the United States roaring back and all the jobs and all the manufacturing will flow back into the United States.
--:-- Damien Cave: But it's just nowhere near that simple. What we know from the tariffs that Trump put in place in his first term, which hit China pretty hard and moved a lot of companies into other parts of Southeast Asia, is that jobs don't necessarily come back to the United States. In many cases, they just move elsewhere around the world where it's affordable and cheaper than it is actually to produce them in the United States. even with tariffs applied.
--:-- Damien Cave: So, you know, this is a moment of extreme global disruption that will play out for many, many years in ways that are likely to be very unpredictable.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For more on the tariffs, listen to today's episode of The Daily.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, the Trump administration began carrying out the layoffs of 10,000 federal health workers from the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 2,000 of those layoffs happened at the country's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The CDC has been a target of many conservatives since the pandemic when they criticized its response to COVID. But the cuts have gone beyond that, hitting across the entire agency and gutting whole offices dedicated to things like reproductive health or gun violence prevention.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've also hit scientists who were studying the health effects of smoking, lead poisoning, and sexually transmitted diseases, among many other issues.
--:-- Apoorva Mandavilli: What's clear from looking at some of the cuts is that the people who will be most affected are people who are poor who live in rural areas who are people of color because some of the units that were cut specifically help those populations with their health issues.
--:-- Apoorva Mandavilli: For example, a part of the Division of Reproductive Health that was cut specifically helps minority populations deal with their maternal and child health issues.
--:-- Apoorva Mandavilli: You know, this is happening as we are already coping with multiple public health crises all over the country now. We have measles outbreaks. We have a bird flu epidemic. We have STDs that have been soaring and are really not showing big signs of coming down.
--:-- Apoorva Mandavilli: And so the CDC deals with all of those problems, and it's a bit difficult to imagine how it will do that work when it's been cut down so much.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has learned that the Trump administration has also gutted the communications staff at multiple health agencies. Many of those employees made sure the public was aware of food and drug recalls, shared information about disease outbreaks, or helped explain complex scientific research in an accessible way.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The head of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he's cutting back on bloated bureaucracy. But an FDA spokeswoman, who was laid off this week, told the Times it's the complete opposite of the radical transparency that Kennedy promised when he took the job, and that it's, quote, doing a disservice to the public.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A new study published this week in the journal Nature shows that getting vaccinated against shingles can reduce the risk of developing dementia.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The research adds to the growing body of evidence that preventing some viral infections may help stave off cognitive decline. Shingles is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox when you're a kid. It can remain dormant in your nerve cells for years.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But as people age and their immune systems weaken, the virus can reactivate and cause symptoms like painful blisters. The study suggests shingles may also have lasting effects on brain function.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Researchers found that people who were vaccinated were 20 percent less likely to develop dementia over the next few years than people who were not vaccinated.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The findings could be relevant for millions of people. In the U.S., about one in three adults gets shingles in their lifetime. About a third of eligible adults have received the vaccine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A record shop owner in Canada had an old reel-to-reel tape sitting on his shelf for years, collecting dust, until he finally played it last month. And out of the speakers came the Beatles.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Very young Beatles. The label on the cardboard box had said it was a Beatles demo tape, but the shop owner hadn't really believed it until he heard it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The tape had 15 songs on it, most of which were covers. It appears to be a rare recording from the Beatles' infamous audition for Decca Records back in 1962, when basically no one knew who they were yet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ringo wasn't even in the band. The record label turned them down. The top executive supposedly told them, quote, guitar groups are on the way out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Bootleg copies of their audition have popped up over the years, and the Beatles themselves released a few of the songs back in the 90s.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's unclear exactly how the tape ended up at the shop. The owner said before he listened to it, he would have happily sold it for $20. Now he's a little more attached to it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The news of the resurfaced tape comes on the heels of another big Beatles development. Director Sam Mendes is going to start filming four movies on the band, one from each member's perspective, and he announced the casting this week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The biggest name, Paul Meskel, most recently of the Gladiator sequel, will play Paul McCartney. And you can see the rest of the actors at nytimes.com if you want to see how close they got trying to cast the Fab Four.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.
