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Good morning from the Financial Times.
Today is Wednesday, April 2nd, and this is your FT News Briefing.
An American company is trying to take a bite out of TikTok.
And it's Tariff Day here in the US.
We've got the view from Wall Street.
The market just wants certainty.
The market has been suffering probably more from the vacillation and uncertainty about tariff policy than it has from the threat of very high tariffs itself.
Plus, a Syrian group of first responders is staging a comeback.
I'm Marc Filippino and here's the news you need to start your day.
Andrisen Horowitz is in talks to help buy out TikTok's Chinese owner.
The bid comes as the Trump administration is trying to force ByteDance to give up control of the popular social media app.
If ByteDance doesn't offload TikTok to non -Chinese entities, it will be banned in the US on Saturday.
Andreessen Horowitz's potential investment is part of a wider effort that Oracle is putting together and sources tell the FTE the bid is a front runner.
It is finally here, US President Donald Trump is set to announce his tariff plans today and he's promised this will be a quote liberation day that will rebalance global trade.
Here to talk about what markets are expecting is the FT's US financial commentator Rob Armstrong.
Hi Rob Hi. It's great to be back.
Good to have you. So Rob, we don't have a ton of details from Trump or the White House about what these tariffs will look like, but what is Wall Street expecting?
Well I think there is pretty broad consensus that after all the announcements are done and over with, America's trade partners will face average tariffs for importing goods to the United States in the range of ten to twenty percent.
And that will make it the highest average tariff rate that we've seen in this country since before the Second World War.
Point number two, and I'm going to put a little asterisk by this one, but number two is that Wall Street expects the tariffs that are announced this afternoon to focus on America's biggest trade partners where the US has the biggest trade deficits.
So that's China, the EU, Vietnam, Japan, the list goes on like that.
That's what the White House has called the dirty 15.
What is the asterisk though?
Well, the asterisk is we've gotten information out of the White House that maybe rather than focusing on the dirty 15, universal tariffs of some level, perhaps a high level are still being discussed, which would be a different game altogether.
Okay, so we've got average tariffs of between 10 and 20 percent, we have somewhat of an idea of who the White House is going to target, what else is Wall Street expecting?
Well, then we come to sectoral tariffs.
So in contrast to tariffs that focus on individual trading partners, we have tariffs expected on sensitive sectors, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, lumber, copper, areas like this.
The expectation is that these will be kicked down the road.
And finally, there is a expectation slash hope of a little bit of softening of the trade tensions with our immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada, both of whom are very important partners for us.
JS Well, the thing that has been repeated again and again is that the market just wants certainty.
The market has been suffering probably more from the vacillation and uncertainty about tariff policy than it has from the threat of very high tariffs itself.
That being said, that probably means equities don't like this very much. Stocks don't like tariffs.
Bonds like it a little better because they're a safe haven asset.
So people go running to treasury bonds and when growth expectations diminish.
And for technical reasons I won't go into, probably higher tariffs strengthen the dollar.
You know, but the Trump administration's argument is that this stock market volatility is short -term pain for long -term gain.
What have analysts told you about the actual long -term economic impact of these tariffs?
Tariffs are a tax. Taxes all else equal are a drag on economic activity.
So if tariffs go up globally, that diminishes global growth by some degree.
The question is who's growth gets diminished.
And that is actually a very hard question to answer because we haven't run an experiment like this in almost a hundred years.
Rob Armstrong is the FT's US financial commentator.
Thanks Rob. Cheers.
Eurozone inflation has fallen for the second month in a row.
It's now down to 2 .2%.
That's good news for everyone keeping an eye on interest rates.
If inflation keeps dropping, it strengthens the case for the European Central Bank to lower rates again.
Financial markets are pricing in a 75 % chance the ECB will cut by a quarter point when it meets in a few weeks.
But one thing that could potentially pour cold water on all this?
You guessed it. Donald Trump's trade war.
One financial analyst told the FT that if inflation jumps in the U .S. because of higher tariffs.
It might do the same in Europe.
Syria's white helmets are back in action.
The first responders played a big role during the country's civil war.
But members of the Western -funded group were branded as terrorists by former dictator Bashar al -Assad.
And now that the conflict is over, the new government is embracing the white helmets again.
Here to explain is Sara Dadoush.
She's been reporting from Damascus for the FT. Hi, Sarah.
Hi. So just tell me a little bit more about the White Helmets and the role that they played during the country's Civil War.
So the White Helmets initially started off as a ragtag collection of civilian volunteers who cropped up in the aftermath of Syria's civil war in 2011.
They would rush to sites after then Syrian president Bashar al -Assad's Air Force would strike different locations around Syria, and they took on basically the responsibility of search and rescue operations and medical evacuations.
Eventually, they banded together and formed the White Helmets in 2014.
And then they garnered more and more attention, which came with funding from Western governments such as the UK, EU and, until recently, the United States.
Can you tell me why they were so targeted by the Assad regime?
Well, for years, Assad had this fixation on the White Helmets.
The rebels in Syria, since the rebellion started in 2011, really struggled to put forth leaders that the rebels could rally around, that people abroad, the Syrians inside Syria who wanted to resist Assad would rally around, so Syrians starved for heroes, found them, and that was really inside the White Helmets.
So Assad really made it his mission to discredit them, simply because they were some of the most successful operations under the rebellion that won people's hearts and minds.
So why are the White Helmets back now and what role are they playing in the current government?
So in December, after nearly 14 years of war, Assad fell in a pretty bloodless military coup by Hayyad Tahrir al -Sham, this Islamist military group that had ruled this pocket in the north.
there was a big movement towards the capital.
People descended on the capital because they hadn't been in forever.
People were from the capital, there were areas around it, including, obviously, a lot of members of the White Helmets.
The group is still fine tuning what role it would have in the next stage of this new Syria.
It's leader, Ra 'ed Saleh, was just named the Minister for Emergencies and Disasters, which is a newly established ministry.
But it's still unclear whether the group will be folded into this new ministry and how, what shape it would look like.
they actually, after they came to the capital, they tallied the number of ambulances around the country and found that they had more vehicles in their possession than the state itself.
Sarah, what does the inclusion of their leader in this new provisional government tell us about Syria today?
Well, it tells us two things.
First, how ill -equipped the new government is.
They absolutely need organizations like the White Helmets to step in where they still don't have the capabilities to.
The second thing that it shows us is that this new government led by Ahmadinejad, the former leader of HDS, which has now been disbanded, he's very willing to extend a hand across the aisle and kind of reach out to people that he had formerly acrimonious relationships with.
The White Helmets and Ahmadinejad were not, you know, the best of friends, but we're seeing is him reaching out to people who he knows have expertise that his people lack, which is a good sign, at least, it bodes well for the future of Syria.
Sareh Adish reports for The FT from Syria.
Thanks, Sareh. Thank you so much for having me.
You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes.
This has been your daily FT News Briefing.
Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
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