Today’s Big Story

Trump’s Vast Global Tariffs

The newly-announced tariffs that could raise the price of almost everything you buy

We knew they were coming. But now we have the specifics: President Donald Trump unveiled his most expansive tariffs to date on Wednesday, drawing quick promises of retaliation from allies who warned of a trade war that will no doubt upend the global economy. Put simply, the U.S. will impose 10% across-the-board tariffs on all imports and even higher rates for other nations that the White House considers bad actors on trade. For example, a 54% duty will apply to China (fresh duties of 34% on top of existing 20% rates), 24% for Japan and 20% for Europe.

The tariffs will apply to more than 100 trading partners, including the European Union, China, Britain and India. Mexico and Canada, which had been slapped with levies earlier, were excluded. The list practically covered the entire world, with one notable exception: Russia. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios Wednesday that Russia was left off because U.S. sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade.” However, the U.S. still trades more with Russia than with countries like Mauritius or Brunei that did make Trump’s tariffs list.

Trump’s move was a significant escalation of his trade fight and is likely to drive up prices for American consumers and manufacturers. While he had been saying for weeks that he would impose “reciprocal tariffs,” his announcement went far beyond what many experts had expected and is being described as “short-sighted,” and having “no basis in logic,” and being compared to Great Depression-era policies.

As The Verge points out, America is the world’s biggest importer, bringing in trillions of dollars of goods every year. Relatively little is produced in the U.S. anymore, and “the eye-watering taxes will impact supply chains across industries: tech products and gadgets, clothing, food, automobiles and more.” Seeing souring relations between the U.S. and China, some companies have worked to diversify supply chains by moving manufacturing to other countries—Apple, for example, was producing billions of dollars worth of iPhones in India last fall to move away from China. Under Trump’s new plan, Indian imports would get slapped with 26% tariffs.

Trump’s rationale is that tariffs will resuscitate U.S. manufacturing, cut the U.S. trade deficit and help reduce the national debt. But many economists warn that the White House has set in motion one of the largest shifts in global trade in decades, and among the results could be higher prices for U.S. consumers and more inflation. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs raised the probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months to 35%, up from 20%.

Epic Storm Threatens Millions Across the U.S.

Forecasters issued some of their rarest and most extreme alerts on Wednesday

Millions of people across a large swath of the United States from the South to parts of the upper Midwest are facing heavy rain and hail, dangerously high winds, “generational” flooding and other dangerous weather as a major storm system swept across the region overnight and into early Thursday.

Intense and even violent tornadoes have destroyed homes and farms in Missouri and Arkansas. Other tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma late Wednesday night and by Thursday morning were reported in Indiana and Kentucky. Radar data suggests straight-line winds reached 80 mph in Indiana. As I write this, around 5 million people were under tornado watch and more than a quarter million are without power.

Making matters worse, the wide-reaching storm system generating these tornadoes is expected to stall today, triggering multiple days of nearly nonstop rain that could trigger “generational” flooding throughout Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, National Weather Service forecasters warned. The strong language of the “particularly dangerous situation” designation is used by the Weather Service when forecasters want to grab attention—it only gets used in rare events, mainly when strong and violent tornadoes are possible, but also in other extremely critical events such as wildfires and floods.

Airline Food Is Really Taking Off

First comes the burgers, and we could have in-air fries and avocado toast

Airline food has long gotten a bad rap. And, well, it’s fairly deserved. The meals are essentially glorified leftovers: Whatever gets served at 35,000 feet a few hours into your flight was cooked on the ground long before takeoff, then chilled to a safe temperature and eventually reheated for you in the air—a bit like trying to re-create last night’s restaurant meal for today’s dinner.

But, while we’re still waiting for supersonic flight improvements, it seems like in-flight dining has been seeing vast improvements and innovations. For starters, Delta is now serving Shake Shack burgers to first class passengers. According to Bloomberg, it’s proved so popular that burgers now account for nearly 15% of the roughly 4,500 hot meals prepped every day at the company’s Atlanta flight kitchen. Just a few weeks into the expanded program, the on-ground facility is ordering a third bun-toasting-and-buttering machine—the same ones Shake Shack uses in its restaurants—to make sure it can keep up.

The one thing it can’t offer (yet)? French fries. Apparently, the popular side dish is something most airlines are still trying to perfect. Fries lose their crispiness when they sit and are reheated, and nobody wants sad, soggy fries. But they’re working on it. Another holy grail is avocado toast. There are ways to keep avocado from turning an unsightly brown—lemon or lime juice, for example—but the dish can’t come preassembled, as there’s no way to reheat the toast without also warming up the avocado. This all makes me think of the amazing food I’ve had on my recent flights to and from Tokyo. Those rice and noodle dishes work well in the air. And don’t take my word for it—Food & Wine’s 2025 Top International Airlines for Food and Drink should settle all debate about the overwhelming popularity of the cuisine. Seven of the 10 airlines on the list are Asian.

Nintendo's Switch 2 Revealed

The next-generation handheld will cost $450 and be available on June 5

If you’ve been waiting for the Nintendo Switch 2, it will soon be yours, barring any supply chain issues or shortages (or ongoing trade wars). After pulling back the curtain on its new console during a one-hour Direct livestream, Nintendo announced Wednesday that the highly-anticipated handheld will be available via preorders at select retailers on April 9.

The Switch 2 looks very similar to the original system, albeit with a larger display, magnetic Joy-Cons and a sleeker design. The company also reaffirmed that the upcoming console will be backwards compatible with Switch games. Along with an upgraded display, a new C button is a dedicated way to enter a chat session with friends. As well as the standard features you’d expect from voice chat, Nintendo has built a Discord-like video-sharing feature, which lets you show your gameplay to others and see other people’s screens while you’re playing.

Perhaps the biggest feature, Engadget says, is one you can’t see: The Switch 2 has an all-new processor and GPU and significantly more storage (256GB vs 64GB in the Switch OLED), along with support for faster and more capacious microSD cards. This will obviously lead to better first-party games and upgraded Switch experiences, but more importantly it will mean multi-platform games that had to skip the original, underpowered Switch will be able to be ported over.

The Long Read

Society tells us we should have a partner—but we shouldn’t want one

Let go of fear.