What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
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What are the key topics in today's episode?
Good morning. It's Wednesday, April 2nd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, a trio of election results sends a warning sign to President Trump and the Republican Party. A rare spate of protests in Gaza against Hamas's leadership. And Senator Cory Booker breaks the record for longest ever Senate floor speech.
How are tariffs affecting the U.S. economy?
But first, today, President Trump will hold an event in the Rose Garden where he'll detail plans for his next batch of tariffs. Now, Trump is no stranger to proposing, delaying, enacting and even dropping tariffs. As of March 21st, tariffs were placed on roughly $800 billion worth of goods, with many countries, including several of our allies, imposing their own tariffs back at us. Taken all together, economists say there's little doubt consumer prices will go up and could even lead us into a recession.
Why are Americans feeling uneasy about the economy?
A lot of Americans are nervous about a lot of things in the economy. That's Business Insider's Emily Stewart. If there is one word that I think kind of describes the moment, it is uncertainty, right? People are nervous about what's going to happen in the future. They're nervous about inflation. People are on edge about tariffs and economic policy. It seems like sort of day to day, we really don't entirely know what's going on. And we also know that people are nervous about their jobs.
On paper, economic indicators are somewhat mixed. The labor market is, at least for the moment, in pretty solid shape, with unemployment rates low, historically speaking. But the stock market just had its worst month in years. And consumer confidence is way down. According to the Conference Board, a group that tracks consumer confidence on a monthly basis, the consumer confidence index dropped by 7.2 points in March, its lowest since January of 2021.
as people's outlooks on income and business and the labor market declined, people's expectations for the future really declined to a level that tends to signal a recession. Now, that doesn't mean a recession is going to come, but people feel pretty bad.
Two-thirds of consumers believe that unemployment will increase. And when that happens, people tend to be more conservative with their spending.
The University of Michigan also does consumer sentiment surveys, and they're seeing similar things where people feel pretty bad about a lot of things. They feel bad about the economy, regardless of their age, their income, politics. What we are seeing is that people expect the unemployment rate to go up at levels that we were seeing around the Great Recession. So people are anxious. But we're also seeing that people are nervous about their own incomes. And that is a little bit different because that's not just saying... Ugh, things are bad, but I'm OK at saying I'm worried I'm not going to be OK as well.
It's easy for Americans to blame or thank the president when it comes to how they feel about their bank accounts. Typically, the president alone doesn't really control the outlook for the economy. But Stewart says we are living in remarkable times.
I do think right now that we can say a fair amount of what's happening in terms of sentiment is really stemming from the White House, is stemming from the president. If you look at Doge, Elon Musk is running. Day to day, it is these people are fired. These people are reinstated. Maybe they're not. We're cutting budgets here. We're not cutting budgets there. If you think about tariffs, again, it really has been... Today we're doing this, tomorrow we're doing that. I think there is like a real level of uncertainty. And so maybe that's not showing up in the data yet. But again, if you are a business, how do you make a decision about who to hire right now or whether or not you should hire? Because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
What did the Wisconsin election results reveal?
President Trump has acknowledged prices will go up, but says the pain of tariffs will be worth it, with his senior trade advisor, Peter Navarro, estimating the U.S. will raise about $600 billion to $700 billion a year from tariffs. But CNBC spoke with some economists who say, in reality, the U.S. will probably bring in less than half of that. Results are in from yesterday's elections.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What are the key topics in today's episode?
0:05–0:34
2
How are tariffs affecting the U.S. economy?
0:34–1:05
3
Why are Americans feeling uneasy about the economy?
1:05–3:48
4
What did the Wisconsin election results reveal?
3:48–5:17
5
How did Florida's special elections impact the Republican Party?
5:17–13:54
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Apple News Today
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