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Here’s what you need to know
Trump-ets and crumpets. President Donald Trump just announced his first post-tariff trade deal — with the U.K. He claimed this is the first of many deals “in serious stages of negotiation.”
Duty’s in the details. The 10% universal tariff Trump has imposed might be the floor, not the ceiling. The president suggested that countries might not get the same deal he offered the U.K.
Powell play. A day after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, Trump went after the central bank chief, Jerome Powell, yet again — writing that he’s “a FOOL.”
Aid and abet. Bill Gates is holding Elon Musk responsible for the deaths of the “world’s poorest children” as a result of Musk’s DOGE-related cuts to U.S. aid.
Byte-sized win. Chipmakers Nvidia and AMD saw their stocks climb after the Trump administration said it planned to reverse a Biden-era policy that restricted some exports.
A glitch in the search? Don’t panic about Google’s stock, one analyst says, despite news that Apple saw a drop in conventional search traffic on its phones.
Car-nage. Toyota just became the latest automaker to warn of significant tariff-related hits: The car company said the levies will cost it $1.3 billion in April and May.
Token gestures. On Thursday, Bitcoin crossed the $100,000 milestone — its highest mark since February, after floundering for months under the so-called first “crypto president.”
Net-worthy cause
Bill Gates wants to see fewer zeroes in his bank account. The Microsoft co-founder — and mega-billionaire — says he wants to give away the majority of his fortune in the next 20 years. And he wants other billionaires to do the same.
In a blog post, the Microsoft co-founder laid out his plan to give away 99% of his wealth — currently around $114 billion — to the Gates Foundation, which will then shut down two decades from now, having (ideally) spent more than $200 billion battling the world’s problems, including infectious diseases, child mortality, poverty, and more.
It’s a shift in tempo. Originally, the foundation was slated to sunset 20 years after Gates’ death. But now, with his 70th birthday around the corner, he’s speeding things up. Gates said he wants to make sure the world moves forward over the next two decades, and he believes his money can help make that happen.
In his words:
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
That means, he said, “The clock starts now — and I can’t wait to make the most of it.” Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on Gates’ plan to close out his tab with a bang, not a balance.
Crony Island
Ken Griffin — the Citadel founder and one of the Republican Party’s most powerful financial backers — is sounding an alarm. He says Trump’s tariff plans aren’t just bad economics, they could open the floodgates to crony capitalism.
In an interview with Politico, Griffin warned that the president’s sweeping, sporadically applied tariffs are creating a system where the government picks economic winners and losers.
“It’s terrifying to watch this play out over the course of weeks,” he said.
Trump has pitched his trade policy as a must for national security and a win for American manufacturers, arguing that higher levies on imported goods will boost domestic production. But Griffin sees something more chaotic taking shape: a patchwork of exemptions and inconsistencies that reward political connections over economic fundamentals.
Griffin is no stranger to criticizing Trump, but he did vote for him in 2024. Now, any optimism he had about a Trump presidency appears to be evaporating. Griffin is joining a growing chorus of discontent in Wall Street circles, worried that Trump’s trade war will have all sorts of devastating impacts on the global economy. Quartz’s Niamh Rowe has more on the economic red flags rippling throughout Wall Street.
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