Ata mārie and welcome to your Tuesday recap of the main business and political stories making headlines.
First today, US President Donald Trump warned that tariff exemptions on smartphones and other electronics would be short-lived, reinforcing that no-one was "getting off the hook," the Guardian reported.
“There was no tariff ‘exception’," Trump said. “These products are subject to the existing 20% fentanyl tariffs, and they are just moving to a different tariff bucket.”
He promised to launch a national security trade investigation into the semiconductor sector and the wider electronics supply chain. “We will not be held hostage by other countries, especially hostile trading nations like China.”
Trump also pondered possible temporary tariff exemptions on imported vehicles and parts to give automotive companies more time to set up manufacturing in the US, Bloomberg reported.
“I’m looking at something to help car companies with it. They’re switching to parts that were made in Canada, Mexico, and other places, and they need a little bit of time, because they’re going to make them here,” Trump told reporters.
Shares in General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis hit session highs after Trump’s comments, erasing earlier falls.
US President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, US consumer jitters got worse in March about the outlook for inflation, unemployment, and the sharemarket because of the global trade tit-for-tat, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey, CNBC reported.
The Survey of Consumer Expectations suggested inflation could reach 3.6% in 12 months, up half a percentage point from February. Consumers also noted concerns about the cost of living, while they predicted a lift in unemployment in the coming months.
In other news, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited Trump to visit Ukraine to observe first-hand the damage from a Russian attack on the city of Sumy on the weekend, the ABC reported.
Russia said two of its missiles hit a meeting of Ukrainian military commanders in the strike, which killed 34, including two children.
“Please come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children, destroyed or dead," Zelensky told CBS.
Trump didn’t acknowledge the invitation when he posted on social media about the conflict. He repeated the inaccurate claim that Ukraine was responsible for Russia's invasion, the ABC reported.
"President Zelensky and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST," Trump wrote.
At the White House, Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said a Maryland man, wrongly deported to El Salvador, won’t be returned to the US despite a Supreme Court ruling, CNN reported.
The ruling said the US must “facilitate” Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s return, but White House officials argued it was up to El Salvador.
Bukele was asked by CNN about the case. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
Abrego Garcia entered the country illegally around 2011, but an immigration judge withheld his removal in 2019.
Conflict in Gaza.
In the Middle East, militant group Hamas rejected a ceasefire proposal presented by Egypt that called for its disarmament, Al Jazeera reported. At least 13 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Monday local time.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said about 50,983 Palestinians were confirmed dead and 116,274 wounded in the conflict so far.
Over the Ditch, Clorox Australia, the manufacturer of Glad waste disposal and food storage bags, was hit with a A$8.25 million penalty for incorrect recycling claims, the ABC reported.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued Clorox for misleading customers between June 2021 and July 2023, after the company suggested some Glad bags were partly made of recycled "ocean plastic".
Clorox admitted the products were made from about 50% plastic waste collected from communities in Indonesia with no formal waste management systems and located up to 50 kilometres away from a shoreline, along with non-recycled plastic, processing aid, and dye.
