WASHINGTON — The trade war President Donald Trump promised has begun, threatening the world economy and straining the United States’ longstanding alliances in Europe and Asia.

Related Articles

No gift money? No problem. How to afford a house on your own

Trump’s tariffs aren’t strictly reciprocal. Here’s how he calculated them

Mexico celebrates dodging latest US tariffs but feels the effects of global economic uncertainty

Fear that Trump tariffs will spark recession wipes out $2 trillion in value from US stock values

These are the places affected by Trump’s tariffs

Goods imported from dozens of countries and territories are now going to be taxed at sharply higher rates, and that is expected to drive up the costs of everything from cars to clothes to computers.

These tariffs – which can run as high as 50% — are meant to punish countries for trade barriers that Trump says unfairly limit U.S. exports and cause it to run huge trade deficits.

Even countries with which the U.S. enjoys trade surpluses – meaning it sells to them more than it buys, such as the United Kingdom and Argentina – are being targeted with a minimum tariff of 10%. And the highest tariffs are landing on two tiny territories that trade little with America — the African kingdom of Lesotho and the French possession of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off Canada’s Atlantic coast.

For decades, global commerce abided by tariff rates agreed to by the U.S. and 122 other countries during the 1980s and 1990s. On Wednesday, Trump detonated that arrangement, saying that other countries had exploited the system and “ripped off’’ the United States for years, causing its once-mighty manufacturing base to shrink.

“Our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered,” the president said in the Rose Garden.

Global financial markets recoiled on Thursday. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 1,394 points, or more than 3%, and the U.S. dollar fell against other major currencies – a sign that investors are worried about the U.S. economy.

“This is a game changer, not only for the U.S. economy but for the global economy,” said Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research for Fitch Ratings. “Many countries will likely end up in a recession. You can throw most forecasts out the door, if this tariff rate stays on for an extended period of time.”

President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in Washington, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Trump is doing what he said he’d do

During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly talked about imposing a “universal tariff’’ of 10% to 20% on all imports — and the new 10% baseline tariffs fit the description.

He also threatened to hit imports from China with 60% tariffs, and he’s now slapping a “reciprocal’’ tariff of 34% on China – on top of the 20% levies he’d announced earlier this year.

Combine the new tariffs on China with the ones left over from his first term, and from President Joe Biden’s, and the full tax on Chinese goods will now approach 70%, said Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics.

“It’s extreme, but it aligns with what Trump campaigned on,’’ said Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation.

Nobody knows if the tariffs will prove permanent or if the U.S. will lower or drop them in response to other countries negotiating to reduce their own tariffs and other trade barriers.

FILE – President Herbert Hoover signs the unemployment and drought relief bills on Dec. 20, 1930. (AP Photo, File)

U.S. tariff rates are going back more than 100 years

Even before Wednesday’s bombshell, the president had been lobbing tariffs with abandon in his second term. He restored 25% tariffs from his first term on steel and aluminum, imposed 25% levies on cars and light trucks, hit China with 20% import taxes and levied 25% tariffs on some Canadian and Mexican imports.

The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that his 2025 tariffs – including Wednesday’s – would lift America’s effective average tariff rate to 22.5%. That would be up from 2.5% last year and the highest level since 1909 — even higher than the notorious Smoot-Hawley tariffs that Congress passed during the Great Depression.

Before lawmakers ratified the 16th amendment to the Constitution in 1913, introducing a national income tax, tariffs supplied a big share of the federal government’s revenue – more than 90% at times in the mid-1800s. The U.S. moved from tariffs to income taxes to raise more money to finance an expanding government, collect more revenue from the wealthy and make the economy more efficient by reducing trade barriers and encouraging competition.

Trump wants to return to those days and replace income tax collections with tariffs. Last year, tariffs accounted for less than 2% of federal revenue, while 51% came from the income tax and 36% from Social Security and Medicare taxes.

US President Donald Trump appears on a television screen at the stock market in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Tariffs are likely to damage the U.S. and world economies

The Yale Budget Lab estimates that Trump’s 2025 tariffs will increase U.S. consumer prices by 2.3% in the short run, costing American households $3,800 a year.

The tariffs he announced on “Liberation Day” alone will push up prices by 1.3%, the lab calculates – a $2,100 tax on households. Clothing prices will go up 17% as higher import tariffs hit textiles from Southeast Asia and Bangladesh.

The lab says that Trump’s tariffs will reduce U.S. economic growth – which was 2.8% in 2024 — by 0.9 percentage points this year.

The damage will also extend to Europe, Southeast Asia and China. “We can expect global economic growth to start plummeting as trade flows decline, prices increase and businesses put off investments,’’ said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade official who is now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Trump hits allies and poor countries

Between the so-called reciprocal and baseline tariffs, Trump hit allies and adversaries, rich and poor countries, and those open and closed to U.S. exports.

Even Singapore, perhaps the freest-trading economy in the world, is getting slugged with the 10% levies, belying Trump’s claims to be balancing other countries’ protectionist policies, said Scott Lincicome, a trade analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute.

“This is not reciprocal at all,’’ Lincicome said. “Getting to real numbers on foreign trade barriers and their effects on U.S. trade numbers would require lengthy investigations and would take months, if not years, to produce. … They might as well have pulled the numbers out of a hat.’’

Taiwan, a U.S. ally, faces a 32% tariff, not much less than geopolitical rival China’s 34%.

Poor countries also bore the brunt of some of Trump’s most onerous tariffs.

Lesotho, a tiny country surrounded by South Africa, is facing a 50% “reciprocal’’ tariff, for example, even though its annual economic output per person is less than $2,900 (compared to America’s $76,200).

Cambodia, whose annual economic output per person is about $7,200, is absorbing a 49% tariff. That is partly, the White House says, because it has been a conduit for Chinese-made goods eventually headed to the United States to dodge U.S. tariffs on China.

Canada and Mexico got off relatively easy

Trump’s trade policies toward America’s northern and southern neighbors has been erratic. He has twice announced and then suspended or watered down 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods, ostensibly to get them to do more than crack down on fentanyl and immigrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.

Last month, Trump suspended the 25% duties on Canadian and Mexican goods that comply with the US-Mexico Canada Agreement, a trade pact he negotiated with the two countries in his first term. On Wednesday, the White House said that USMCA-compliant imports could continue to enter the United States duty free.

Once the two countries have satisfied Trump’s demands on immigration and drug trafficking, the tariff on the rest of their imports would drop from 25% to 12%, the White House said.

“The obvious winners were Canada and Mexico,’’ Neil Shearing and Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics wrote in a commentary.

By TARA COPP, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced Thursday that he would review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to convey plans for a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.

Related Articles

Trump’s tariffs aren’t strictly reciprocal. Here’s how he calculated them

These are the places affected by Trump’s tariffs

Trump’s tariff push is a race against time, and potential voter backlash

Trump’s changes to the federal government aren’t yet a clear political winner or loser: AP-NORC poll

Trump ordered to pay legal bill of UK firm he sued over Russia dossier

The review will also look at other defense officials’ use of the publicly available encrypted app, which is not able to handle classified material and is not part of the Defense Department’s secure communications network.

Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by national security adviser Mike Waltz. The chain included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business. Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” the acting inspector general, Steven Stebbins, said in a notification letter to Hegseth.

In the chain, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop — before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne.

The review was launched at the request of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s top Democrat.

In congressional hearings, Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern about the use of Signal and pressed military officers on whether they would find it appropriate to use the commercial app to discuss military operations.

Both current and former military officials have said the level of detail Hegseth shared on Signal most likely would have been classified. The Trump administration has insisted no classified information was shared.

Five years ago, tourism officials were wrapping their heads around a new world of theme park reservations, temperature checks at turnstiles, amped-up sanitization procedures and the very concept of social distance as the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly transformed their business.

Some procedures faded with the virus, and others evolved into practices that continue within the travel industry.

In 2020 and 2021, the Orlando Sentinel asked five tourism experts what trends to anticipate. Now, in 2025, they talk about the pandemic’s lasting effects as well as new trends in international travel, room service and rooftop bars.

Magic Kingdom visitors interact with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, too, after masking restrictions were loosened in 2021. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Reservation station

Date-specific reservations for theme parks didn’t last in most places, but the technology used has accelerated related developments, said Curtis Parks, managing partner at Jacksonville-based Icon Experiences.

“From that, spawns all these new options that you can do with your ticketing systems, from dynamic pricing to bundling your hotel and your park tickets and food, and passholders can now add friends to their ticket purchases, and online tickets being sent to digital wallets,” he said.

Park reservations emerged as attractions ended pandemic-related shutdowns in 2020. Walt Disney World continues to require reservations with some ticket types, although with fewer restrictions.

An emphasis on online purchases and cleanliness influenced the trend of cashless parks at SeaWorld attractions, Busch Gardens and Six Flags locations, Parks said. Disney and Universal never stopped taking cash.

“All the major players were all still taking cash, and then when the pandemic hit, they suspended that and went to cards only and pushing everybody online,” he said.

“They say it’s faster and safer and more secure. … You don’t have the big cash vaults anymore like you used to have at the parks,” he said.

On the upside, billions of dollars are being invested in paused or once-canceled theme-park projects, a sign of confidence, Parks said.

“You’re betting on the American families and people visiting the parks, and that’s exciting to see,” he said.

SeaWorld Orlando’s parking lot stands empty as theme parks experienced a pandemic-related shutdown in 2020. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Fading influences

The pandemic’s influence has faded as far as future attractions go, said Brian Morrow, owner of B Morrow Productions, a Kissimmee-based design studio that works on projects for theme parks, resorts and museums.

“The words pandemic and COVID are rarely used in any design process currently. They were back in ‘21, but now you don’t hear it at all. … Clients aren’t using those words,” he said.

Another bygone factor is the fear of touch screens.

“We do some work in the educational category, so a lot of touch screens are used there … and all that [concern] has gone away,” Morrow said. “It really has dissipated. It’s not a top topic.”

Epic Universe: Early ground-level pictures of new Orlando theme park

Talk about virtual queues has decreased, but reservations have lingered at some attractions for crowd management and guest satisfaction, he said. Gaylord Palms  Resort retained them for its holiday season “Ice” attraction.

“They kept it because it allowed them to remove this massive queue line that they would build and these massive 9 a.m. arrivals for guests,” Morrow said.

Changes to chew on

On the food front, dining at Walt Disney World is back to its old ways, with some exceptions, said AJ Wolfe, who runs the Disney Food Blog, a site independent from Disney World.

“Everything is returned to normal in terms of character meals and buffets,” two fan favorites that were suspended during the pandemic, she said.

Some restaurants inside the theme parks are not open as much as they were. And some eateries have altered dining options. For instance, Be Our Guest restaurant at Magic Kingdom bagged counter service at lunchtime in favor of a prix fixe menu, Wolfe said. A la carte service at California Grill atop the Contemporary Resort also is gone, she said.

In Disney-owned resorts, room service is available at the Grand Floridian only, Wolfe said. It could be a staffing or financial issue, she said. There are also no 24-hour eateries on Disney property now, she said.

“There were so many issues with staffing, and it could just be that they haven’t rehired for those particular things,” she said.

There’s also been the rise of food-delivery services. It’s likely a less expensive option than room service would be, Wolfe said.

“DoorDash or Uber Eats or whatever are so prominent, and they will deliver to your hotel,” she said. “The biggest difference is that you have to put on clothes because you have to go down and get it.”

Universal Studios visitors ride The Incredible Hulk Coaster with empty rows providing social distance when the park reopened in June 2020. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Filling rooms

Hotel occupancy in the U.S. is not as robust as in 2019, said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality, for CoStar Group, an Arlington, Virginia-based real estate company that tracks real-estate analytics.

“You would think that we’ve made up for that,” he said. “The good news is that, of course, room rates are 30% higher than they were back then.”

Industry trends that surged during the pandemic include keyless entry and remote check-in for rooms, and those have lasted.

The mindset that rooms don’t need to be cleaned daily paired pandemic precautions with hoteliers’ desire to fulfill green expectations, Freitag said.

But then during pandemic times “a lot of people got laid off, and then as they got rehired again, the unions were saying, ‘Wait, wait, wait, if we need less, if you make housekeeping optional, then we need less housekeepers, which means we have less union members, which means we have less union dues. And we don’t like that.’” he said.

A more visible hotel trend to emerge from the pandemic: Rooftop bars.

“They were always sort of in vogue in, like, ‘17, ‘18, ‘19, but I think if you build a hotel today, you will have a rooftop bar,” Freitag said. “It is just such a great magnet, and customers love it, and even locals like it. … Outdoors plus food and beverage makes for a winning combination.”

Brit parade

“Looking back to where we were in 2021, there was no immediate sign, certainly, of the international market coming back. There was a lot of doom and gloom about it,” said Simon Veness, co-author of “The Brit Guide to Orlando” as well as “111 Places in Orlando That You Must Not Miss” with his wife Susan Veness.

For Orlando-bound Brits, “bookings for this year are pretty much on a par with last year, which were pretty much getting back to pre-pandemic levels,” Veness said.

“The bad news, looking just beyond the U.K. market, is that Germany, France and Scandinavia are all trending down for us in visitation this year and especially in the last couple of months,” Veness said. “Orlando doesn’t rely a lot on those particular markets, but they’re not unsubstantial.”

Now competing for European tourists is the United Arab Emirates, which is marketing heavily in the U.K. and the U.S., he said.

“That could certainly be one place that would have an immediate appeal for the U.K. and for Western Europe because it’s a shorter flight than to the U.S. or certainly to Florida,” Veness said.

There is evidence that some people are “politically disinclined” to visit the United States now, he said.

“The good news for Orlando and Florida is that it’s a slightly different kettle of fish,” Veness said. “The U.K., in particular, tends to still see it as this fantasy destination that is divorced from reality.”

Generally, Europeans don’t plan vacations as much in advance as Americans, he said, and he suspects some people are waiting until after Epic Universe opens at Universal Orlando on May 22. A large ticket broker in England reported record sales on the first day that Epic tickets could be purchased.

“That’s a pretty hefty sign that people are more turned on by the theme parks than they are turned off by the politics,” Veness said.

Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com. BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.

It’s infectious, the love “Freaky Tales” has for the Oakland, California, of the mid-1980s.

You need not have grown up then and there — as one of the film’s co-writers and -directors, Ryan Fleck, did — to appreciate it, although having done so surely would give you all those nostalgic feelings Fleck is hoping to conjure. Shooting in Oakland in late 2022 and early ’23, the production clearly went to great lengths to re-create aspects of the city, a world away, if only 12 actual miles and some water, from its Bay Area neighbor, San Francisco.

Plus, two Oakland legends, rapper Too $hort and Golden State Warriors star Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, serve as significant characters in “Freaky Tales” AND make cameos in it. The former also serves as the film’s narrator, helping to establish its fun-and-fuzzy tone in its opening moments, informing the viewer that “Oakland in ’87 was hella wild,” talking about an electricity in the air and even throwing in a bit about some “cosmic green (expletive).”

In select theaters this week, “Freaky Tales” is the latest effort by Fleck and his filmmaking partner, Anna Boden, whose credits include 2006’s “Half Nelson,” 2015’s “Mississippi Grind” and, most notably, 2019 Marvel Cinematic Universe entry “Captain Marvel.” The generally entertaining “Freaky Tales” debuted in January 2024 at the Sundance Film Festival and certainly has that gritty, on-a-wing-and-a-prayer, film-fest feel.

Four separate but interconnected tales comprise “Tales,” helping it to stand out from the cinematic pack. (While Fleck, in the film’s production notes, cites mid-1980s flicks “Repo Man” and “The Last Dragon” for helping to inspire its retro feel and B-movie visual style, the nonlinear, overlapping structure and a few characters crossing paths in a diner feel like nods to Quentin Tarantino’s beloved 1994 jam, “Pulp Fiction.”)

If you don’t count a member of Hollywood royalty who makes a cameo as a man behind the counter at a video store (hint: Fleck and Boden directed two episodes of last year’s acclaimed historical limited Apple TV+ series “Masters of the Air”), the biggest names in the cast are “Star Wars” franchise alums Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn.

Neither appears in the first chapter, “The Gilman Strikes Back,” centered around 924 Gilman Street, a since-closed underground music club important to the East Bay punk scene, which produced such acts as Green Day and Rancid. Despite the fiery music played there, it’s home to a crowd that believes strongly in nonviolence.

Related Articles

‘A Working Man’ review: Jason Statham solves a Chicago sex trafficking problem

‘Death of a Unicorn’ review: A dark comedy with more splatter than glitter

Richard Chamberlain, TV heartthrob turned serious actor, dies at 90

Boulder, Colorado, wins Sundance Film Festival starting in 2027, beating out Utah and Ohio

Spring movies 2025 — here are 19 films to get excited about before popcorn season

However, after a gang of skinheads invades the club, attacking both audience members and performers, folks such as patrons Tina (Ji-young Yoo) and Lucid (Jack Champion) consider whether they may have to change their ways to defend their turf.

Music is also a key component to the second tale, “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” in which up-and-coming female rap duo Danger Zone — Barbie (Dominique Thorne) and Entice (Normani) — are offered the chance to take on Too $hort (Bay Area rapper Symba) in a rap battle. (As with Tina and Lucid, we meet them outside the Grand Lake Theatre — after they’ve seen “The Lost Boys” — where they, too, have a not-so-pleasant exchange with the driving-by Nazis.)

Pascal (‘The Mandalorian,” “The Last of Us”) is front and center in the chapter that follows, “Born to Mack,” as Clint, a pain-imposing debt collector on what is supposed to be his last job. That takes place in the back of the aforementioned video store, outside of which sits Clint’s very pregnant wife (Natalia Dominguez) in their car.

Man, that last day on the job just never goes smoothly, does it?

Lastly, we get “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd,” built around a coordinated series of robberies of the homes of Warriors players during a home playoff game against the Los Angeles Lakers in which Floyd scored an astonishing 29 points in the fourth quarter.

The big operation is put together by “The Guy” (Mendelsohn, “Captain Marvel,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”), who by this point already has had a not-so-comfortable interaction with Barbie at the ice cream shop where she and Entice work. It’s fair to say

The Guy will come to regret one house making the final cut of those to be hit on May 10, as “Tales” climaxes in a Tarantino-esque slice of revenge porn featuring Sleepy (Jay Ellis) striking back. (Regardless of what actually happened on that day in 1987, liberties have been taken here given the, well, mystical abilities possessed by the movie’s version of the hooper.)

This cropped image is from a promotional poster for “Freaky Tales.” (Courtesy of Lionsgate)

As a character famously says in “Pulp Fiction,” personality goes a long way, and “Freaky Tales” has a lot of it. A few sluggish stretches are outweighed by the incredibly well-executed throwback look of the film, with credit going to, among others, production designer Patti Podesta (“Jurassic Park,” “Memento”) and costume designer Neishea Lemle (“Hidden Figures,” “Black-ish”).

Its title borrowed from a 1987 Too $hort song, “Freaky Tales” ties together elements from its four stories more than you may expect by the time we get to its quirky but fitting epilogue.

According to the production notes, it took awhile — and several pitches — for Fleck to convince Boden they should make his love letter to 1987 Oakland. The world’s at least a slightly more colorful place now that they have.

‘Freaky Tales’

Where: Theaters.

When: April 4.

Rated: R for strong bloody violence, language throughout including slurs, sexual content and drug use.

Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.5.