Good morning. It is April 28th. It is a lovely morning in New York City, bright, dry and breezy. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. The Iberian Peninsula is blacked out right now thanks to an apparent failure of the EU power grid. It sounds like there's no power anywhere throughout Spain, along with large parts of Portugal and sections of France. 

It's election day in Canada. The conservative parties seem to have been thermostatically closing some of the gap in the polls that had built up as the spectacle of Donald Trump and Trump's outright aggression against Canada apparently reversed the Canadian public's previous sense that it was time to throw out the Liberal Party and turn rightward. But then this morning, Donald Trump went on Truth Social and posted his endorsement of the conservatives accompanied by more of his ramblings about how Canada should be the 51st state of the union. There's that signature tactical mastery and impulse control at work. 

On Semaphore, Ben Smith has confirmed the existence of what seemed like it obviously had to exist, namely, a network of ever more closed private group chats revolving around the thin-skinned and egg-skulled Silicon Valley mogul Marc Andreessen, in which he and his fellow tech barons have spent the last few years radicalizing one another into ever more insane and destructive beliefs. For a while, the Harper's free-speech letter crowd was part of the effort, but they parted ways in a dispute with their ostensible fellow free speech partisans over whether it was appropriate for the government to be purging critical race theory from school curricula. The fascist messaging entrepreneur, Christopher Ruffo, reportedly did the same thing with the tech lords inside the chat that he did with the mainstream liberal media outside the chat, namely, manipulating them into adopting his views without putting any effort into disguising the fact that he was manipulating them into adopting his views. Smith quotes Ruffo as saying, “I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high impact new coalition partners for the right.” Among the people populating this chat universe is the publicity-hungry but operationally secretive, self-packaged democratic consultant, David Shor, whose ideas about race and crime would fit right in with the tech reactionaries, and Mark Cuban, who apparently prefers being the designated democratic arguer in the private arena to owning what might have been a successful Dallas Mavericks team. The whole thing is a classic Ben Smith scoop, in which the forces of lawful evil once again mistake someone who's pure chaotic neutral for a sympathizer. 

Trump's trade war against the world is on its way to delivering some trade casualties while the president riffs and flip-flops on how serious his tariffs are, depending on whoever was last in the room with him, the people who make decisions about putting things on boats and sending them across the Pacific Ocean have been having to make real physical decisions about what's going on. The result, Bloomberg writes is “since the US raised levies on China to 145 percent in early April, cargo shipments have plummeted, perhaps by as much as 60 percent, according to one estimate. That drastic reduction in goods from one of the largest US trading partners hasn't been felt by many Americans yet, but that's about to change. By the middle of May, Bloomberg continues, thousands of companies, big and small, will be needing to replenish inventories. Giant retailers such as Walmart, Inc. and Target Corp. told Trump in a meeting last week that shoppers are likely to see empty shelves and higher prices. Torsten Slock, Apollo Management's chief economist, recently warned of looming COVID-like shortages and significant layoffs in industries spanning trucking, logistics and retail.” Story goes on to say “even when hostilities ease, restarting transpacific trade will bring additional risks. The freight industry has reduced capacity to match weaker demand. That means a surge of orders sparked by detente between the superpowers will likely overwhelm the network, causing delays and boosting costs. A similar scenario unfolded during the pandemic when container prices quadrupled and a glut of cargo ships jammed up ports.” Later on, the story says, “with demand for goods from China to the US sinking fast, cargo carriers have slashed capacity to keep ocean freight rates from cratering. In April, there were about 80 canceled sailings from China to the US, roughly 60 % more than any month during the COVID pandemic, according to figures cited by John McCown, a veteran industry executive. 

The tariffs are also in the lead spot on the front of this morning's New York Times. “Bracing for Trump Tariffs, Both at Home and Abroad” is the two column headline. Underneath it on the left, the headline is “E.U. Pharmaceutical Industry Is Facing Painful Choices.” The Times writes that “pharmaceutical products and chemicals are the EU's number one export to America. Among them are the weightloss blockbuster Ozempic, cancer treatments, cardiovascular drugs and flu vaccines. Most are name brand drugs that yield a large profit in the American market with its high prices and vast numbers of consumers.” The Times then games out some of the responses that the companies could pursue. “Some pharmaceutical companies trying to dodge the tariffs have already announced plans to increase production in the United States, which Mr. Trump wants,” the Times says. “Others could decide to move production there later. Other companies appear to be staying put, but could raise their prices to cover the tariffs, pushing up costs for patients. Or,” the Times notes, “companies might shift their financial profits to the United States for accounting purposes to avoid import charges even as they leave their factories overseas to avoid the expenses of moving and challenges of having to set up new supply chains. 

In the right-hand column, the headline is “U.S. Businesses and States Sue, Testing Executive Power.” It opens with the owner of an educational toy company, wondering how much of his inbound future inventory from China he's going to be able to pay for, but also doing something about it. He has the Times writes, “opted for a more aggressive course of action, joining a growing roster of opponents, now legally challenging Mr. Trump's ability to issue some of the tariffs in the first place. Nearly four weeks into a costly global trade war with no end in sight,” the Times continues, “Mr. Trump is facing a barrage of lawsuits from state officials, small businesses, and even once-allied political groups, all contending that the president cannot sidestep Congress and tax virtually any import at levels to his liking.” So you can add Rick Woldenberg, of the Learning Resources Toy Company of Vernon Hills, Illinois, to the list of people who have a more sound understanding of how the world works than the president and trustees of Columbia University do. “The lawsuits,” the Times writes, “carry great significance not just because the tariffs have roiled financial markets and threatened to plunge the United States into a recession. The legal challenges also stand to test Mr. Trump's claims of expansive presidential power while illustrating the difficult calculation that his opponents face in deciding whether to fight back and risk retribution. None of the lawsuits filed this month,” the Times continues, “are supported by major business lobbying groups, even though many organizations, including the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, have been sharply critical of the president's tariffs and lobbied to lessen their effect. The chamber privately debated bringing a lawsuit, but ultimately decided ‘it was not the best course of action at this time,’ said Neil Bradley, the executive vice president of the group. The president's claimed ability to impose a worldwide set of tariffs unilaterally, with no congressional involvement is based on the notion that he can simply declare that trade in general is an emergency and invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. No president before Mr. Trump,” the Times writes, “had ever imposed such import taxes under the emergency law, which does not once mention the word tariff.” Extratextually, the question of whether the president could possibly be construed to have that power might be answered by the fact that the story reports that one of the lawsuits against the tariffs was filed by a group tied to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman who operated the nexus of money and influence that created the current six to three Republican Supreme Court majority. Even the paymasters who made Trump possible are not happy with how things are going. 

Down at the bottom of page one. There's a story about bonobos, the great apes who are, along with the chimpanzees, humanity's closest living relative, and who have become famous for their peaceful, matriarchal society bonded together by cuddling and frequent sex. But who, researchers are now reporting, also hold their society together with the help of interactions where a group of females will team up and beat the bejesus out of a wayward male. “From 1993 to 2021, the researchers observed,” the Times writes, “1,786 instances of a male starting beef with a female.” Yes, the Times Science Desk used “starting beef,” a famous technical term from primate behavioral studies. “The examples included acting aggressively toward a female or her infant or monopolizing food. In roughly 61 % of these fights,” the Times writes, “the female teamed up with other females and emerged victorious. Males,” the Times goes on to say, “have been known to lose fingers and toes in such conflict. In one unfortunate incident, a male bonobo at the Stuttgart Zoo in Germany had his penis bit in half during a battle with two females. A surgeon was able to sew it back together. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Please keep sending those along if you can. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.