NightOwl

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Everything from crude oil to Big Tech stocks to the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies fell. Even gold, which has hit records recently as investors sought something safer to own, pulled lower. Some of the worst hits walloped smaller U.S. companies, and the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks dropped 5.9% to pull it more than 20% below its record.

Wall Street had long assumed Trump would use tariffs merely as a tool for negotiations with other countries, rather than as a long-term policy. But Wednesday’s announcement may suggest Trump sees tariffs more as helping to solve an ideological goal than just an opening bet in a poker game. Trump on Wednesday talked about wresting manufacturing jobs back to the United States, a process that could take years.

If Trump follows through on his tariffs, stock prices may need to fall much more than 10% from their all-time high in order to reflect the recession that could follow, along with the hit to profits that U.S. companies could take. The S&P 500 is now down roughly 11% from its record set in February.

“Markets may actually be underreacting, especially if these rates turn out to be final, given the potential knock-on effects to global consumption and trade,” said Sean Sun, portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, though he sees Trump’s announcement on Wednesday as more of an opening move than an endpoint for policy.

“The US escalation aims to isolate the Palestinian people, pressure those who support their cause, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and even South Africa, and silence humanitarian voices in the US and Europe under the pretext of anti-Semitism,” Houthi said during a televised speech commemorating International Quds Day.

“The US and Israeli enemies commit genocide against children and women, killing infants even in hospital nurseries, and regard humans like animals,” the leader of the Ansarallah resistance movement added.

Now signals of cuts across departments seem, if anything, inevitable. There are overt promises to trim back the public service to pay for income tax cuts as frontrunners Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre vie for voters' trust at a time of economic insecurity.

Nate Prier, the president of CAPE, argues that now is not the time for cuts, particularly for IRCC, pointing to geopolitical instability and the hardline immigration policies of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. He questions whether Canada is ready to handle an influx of claimants after IRCC workers survive the wave of cuts to their teams and salaries.

“When America starts vomiting up its refugees, like it is right now, when they drive more wars to create more refugees, when we need to delink from the American economy, and we’re going to need skilled workers from around the world to help build the next chapter for Canada, that is a terrible time to start gutting the federal public sector, and especially people that you’ve already trained,” Prier said.

Archive: [ https://archive.is/Ygjjs ]

It seems hardly coincidental that right around the time Iowa University's Minerva Initiative grant was greenlit, the Pentagon began conducting wide-ranging "clandestine psychological operations" on social media, targeting the Arab and Muslim world. These efforts were highly sophisticated, employing expansive armies of bots and trolls with realistic AI-generated profile photos and accompanying 'characters.' In Iran, for instance, Pentagon sock puppets deployed varying narrative approaches to engender engagement and influence perceptions locally. Certain accounts accrued thousands of real-life followers.