Tariffs announcement on April 2, Trump offers cuts for China to seal Tiktok deal

President Donald Trump's immigration policies were deeply unpopular in his first term, but now immigration is the area in which voters most approve of his Second-Term performance.

Trump's advisers are betting that his gamble on Tariffs will pay off in a similar way in time, rewriting the political rules, as well as global rules, to the United States' lasting advantage. tariffs on major U.S. trading partners, including close allies, have been a defining feature of Trump's second term, and more are coming.

He has declared April 2 America's "liberation day" to establish reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners that have their own levies on U.S. imports, overturning decades of policy and threatening chaos for businesses around the world.

It's reminiscent of Trump's hard-line Slugfests over immigration in his first term, from his proposed border wall to travel bans that were unpopular with voters and a bipartisan elite.

Trump also has suggested that he may offer to reduce tariffs on China to secure Beijing's approval for the sale of popular social media platform Tiktok. In January, he delayed the implementation of a law passed under the Biden administration to ban Tiktok.

Reference Sources

1. nbc - Trump prepares his biggest bet on tariffs amid voter skepticism
2. cbs - Trump says he's planning more tariffs on April 2, calling it "liberation day." Here's what it means.
3. bbc - China tariffs may be cut to seal TikTok sale, Trump says

Concern about a major market decline is growing

(Source: Shutterstock)

The stock market has experienced three consecutive weeks of declines, shaving 9.3% from the value of the Standard & Poor's 500 index, with similar declines for the Dow Jones Industrial average and other yardsticks.

President Trump's insistence on slapping tariffs on key trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, and China, has sparked this bout of stock-market weakness. Tariffs tend to be inflationary, at least in the short term on some imported products, and they invite retaliation against U.S. exports.

Trump has gone back and forth on some of his tariff proposals, creating the type of uncertainty that investors dislike.

What's new this time is Trump's refusal to rule out a recession near term.

An Online survey conducted by Allianz life insurance found that 51% of respondents "worry that another big market crash is on the horizon." That is up from 46% at the end of the fourth quarter.

The company surveyed 1,004 people ages 18 and older.

Reference Sources

1. usatoday - Stocks have taken a beating. What should you do about your 401(k)?
2. cnbc - Concern about a major market decline is growing

Alibaba debuts AI model that can process video, audio on phones

(Source: Shutterstock)

Alibaba group holding has released a new artificial intelligence (AI) model in its Qwen series that can process text, pictures, Audio and video, and is efficient enough to run directly on mobile phones and laptops.

The company expects that the new model, now publicly available on hugging face and Github, will be used to build so-called AI agents that can help a visually impaired person navigate their environment through real-time Audio descriptions.

Alibaba is certainly not the only AI developer to make a multimodal model.

OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google both offer Generative AI tools that process different types of input, including text and Audio.

Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. Over the past years, Alibaba cloud says it has open-sourced over 200 Generative AI models.

Reference Sources

1. bussinesstimes - Alibaba debuts AI model that can process video, audio on phones - The Business Times
2. cnbc - Alibaba launches new open-source AI model for 'cost-effective AI agents'
3. thestarmy - Alibaba debuts AI model that can process video, audio on phones

The CommonWealth English daily news digest is a service curated by CommonWealth English team with the help of AI tools.

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