Americans are feeling uneasy about the economy. Business Insider’s Emily Stewart describes why. New election results from Wisconsin and Florida provide indications to how voters are thinking about Trump and Elon Musk. NBC News and Politico have the details. Last week, Palestinians protested Hamas in Gaza. NPR’s Daniel Estrin explains the actions’ significance. Plus, the Justice Department is seeking the death penalty in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Cory Booker set a record for longest speech on the Senate floor, and how one man was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full 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.
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.
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.
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