Morning Brief: ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs, An FBI Cover-Up, & America Pressures Brits On Free Speech

President Donald Trump unveils his highly anticipated tariff plan in a Rose Garden speech. Damning new evidence points to an FBI cover-up ahead of the 2020 election. And, trade negotiations between the U.S. and the U.K. hang in the balance, as the fate of a pro-life protester becomes a bargaining chip.

It’s Thursday, April 3, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:

Trump’s “Liberation Day” Tariffs

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Topline:  After months of anticipation, President Trump rolled out his plans to implement historic tariffs on Wednesday, transforming American trade policy with the stroke of his pen.

World leaders, investors, the business community — everyone has been holding their breath ahead of what Trump described as “Liberation Day.” The announcement in the White House Rose Garden was among the most consequential moments in American trade policy since NAFTA was implemented in 1994, or even the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930.

The Plan: The U.S. will establish a minimum 10% baseline tariff on all countries, regardless of what they charge. From there, the president announced that rates would be reciprocal. But according to Trump, the United States will be gracious, in his words, “kind reciprocal, not full.” In a truly remarkable scene, the president held up a giant poster board listing dozens of countries along with the rate they’ll now pay. Trump says that number was decided by adding up each country’s tariffs, value-added taxes, and currency manipulation. That number was then divided by two, and the final rate was decided.

According to the president, China’s overall rate on U.S. imports is 67%, so we’ll charge 34%. The European Union will face 20% rates; Japan, 24%; Australia, 10%; India, 26%; the United Kingdom will pay 10%; South Africa will pay 60%; and so on.

The president devoted much of his address to the auto industry, saying foreign tariffs had driven American companies to outsource production, leaving our manufacturing base decimated. In an effort to bring that auto production back to the United States, Trump announced additional 25% tariffs on all auto imports. Following that announcement, he called Brian Pannebecker, a United Auto Worker, to the podium.

 “My entire life I have watched plant after plant after plant, in Detroit and the metro area, close,” Pannebecker said. “And the UAW members… we support Donald Trump’s tariff policies 100 percent.”

This plan marks not just a transformation of global trade but also a political transformation. For decades, Republican administrations have opposed tariffs, while Democrats were generally in favor. But Democrats now argue that tariffs are a tax on consumers and will drive inflation higher. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, said Trump was “taking a sledgehammer to the US economy” and vowed to fight his tariff policy “tooth and nail.”

The question now becomes how those other countries respond — will they lower rates in an effort to find relief or dig in for a prolonged trade war? We’ll have answers soon. 

FBI Biden Cover-Up

(Photo by Nes via Getty Images)

Topline: House investigations revealed Tuesday that the FBI sought to silence its own agents from discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop publicly.

Congress has received internal messages from the FBI, which, while heavily redacted, suggest a coordinated effort to cover up elements of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. An FBI analyst confirmed the laptop’s authenticity in a phone call with Twitter on October 14, 2020, the day that a story in the New York Post on information found in Biden’s laptop dropped. After that, the FBI’s brass shut down public discussion. 

According to these messages, an FBI official told Elvis Chan, the FBI liaison for social media companies, that there was a “gag order” on talk about the laptop. This was apparently as the FBI was actively investigating the laptop for criminal conduct. Chan asked what specific crime was suspected of being violated, and the response was censored. But it was apparently shocking enough to make Chan write back, “oh crap. Ok. it ends here.”

The allegation is that the FBI knew the laptop was authentic as early as October 14, 2020, but still moved to censor the New York Post story before the election.

“We already kind of knew the FBI knew it was real,” Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon told Morning Wire. “But the sort of real time details, like on the very same day [the Post broke the story] they knew it was real. That’s new and it’s extra insidious because if you go back to that time… the FBI was running around that same week saying, well, we’re, we’re looking into this being a Russian information dump.”

All the FBI had to do was confirm the laptop’s authenticity. Instead, it allowed a considerable censorship operation to smother a news story. Several major media outlets propped up the FBI’s narrative, from NPR saying it didn’t want to “waste our time on stories that are not really stories” to Politico publishing a story citing dozens of foreign intelligence officials who claimed the laptop “[had] all the classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation. All while the FBI was, in fact, investigating a very real Hunter Biden laptop. The fact that officials from other agencies signed on to that claim suggests the suppression effort extended beyond the FBI.

US Pressures UK Against Censorship

(Edited satirical photo, Original by Mariia Morozova via Getty Images)

Topline: The State Department announced it’s closely monitoring the case of a woman targeted by the British government for her pro-life activism while the United Kingdom negotiates a trade deal with the US.

Over the weekend, the State Department announced that it is following the developments surrounding retired medical scientist Livia Tossici-Bolt. She was reportedly arrested in Bournemouth, England, in 2023 for holding a sign near an abortion clinic that read, “Here to talk if you want.” She’s one of many pro-life activists prosecuted for pro-life activism and prayer in the vicinity of abortion clinics. The U.K. has “buffer zone” laws that prohibit this kind of activity in those areas, including silent prayer. She faced a criminal trial on March 6, and a verdict is expected to be handed down on April 4.

The State Department’s announcement was an oblique warning. Headlines from The Telegraph and other high-profile European publications indicate that the United Kingdom’s censorship of its citizens could actually become a massive liability in regard to the transatlantic relationship, which has historically been very friendly. The State Department never directly said the trade deal was imperiled, but it did say that the U.S. is “concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom.”

The State Department confirmed to Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan that its senior advisor, Sam Samson, recently met with Livia in the U.K. Sources close to the situation told The Daily Wire that State Department officials held bilateral meetings with members of the British government about the topic, including the officials who are pushing hate speech laws. The United States has emphasized that its alliance with the United Kingdom must be civilizational – American allies must be on board with American values, including freedom of speech. 

The White House has not commented directly on this matter, but Vice President JD Vance has consistently made opposition to government censorship a trademark issue. Vance chastised European leaders for censoring their citizens at a security conference in Munich earlier this year. On Tuesday, he reiterated his vision for a liberated West at a Heritage Foundation event.

“ We can rebuild the kind of society where virtue and freedom and our ancient liberties are preserved and enforced and facilitated by our government rather than torn down by our government,” Vance said. “You see in Europe, people arrested for praying and you have the police asking them, well, what are you praying about? As if it was any of the police’s business.”