The Trump administration will this evening impose tariffs of up to 20% on all countries “effective immediately”, though White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the US president remains “open to taking calls” and is “always up for a good negotiation”. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has a “strong plan to retaliate” but Keir Starmer says the UK will not follow suit because a trade deal with the US is at an “advanced stage”. Israel has announced it will launch a major expansion of its military operation in Gaza to “crush and clear the area of terrorists”. The defence minister, Israel Katz, says the plan is to seize large parts of the Palestinian territory, incorporating them into “Israeli security zones”, and has advised residents to evacuate. The American actor Val Kilmer has died aged 65. The star, who was best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, passed away from pneumonia last night.

America is “vaporising” its soft power

The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that civilisations are not murdered, but commit suicide. Despite its extraordinary good fortune, says Edward Luce in the FT, Donald Trump’s America is “flirting with Toynbee’s script”. Every time a foreign scientist is denied entry or a tourist vanishes into detention, it makes headlines in their home country. Overseas students live in fear of being arbitrarily deported or “snatched off the street by masked agents”. Prospective visitors are making other plans (advance bookings for Canada-US flights between April and September are down 70%). “On many fronts, and with deliberate haste, America is vaporising its soft power.”

In some respects, “the brutality is the point”. When Kristi Noem, Trump’s secretary of homeland security, parades in front of shaven-headed detainees, “the sadism is intentional”. When JD Vance invites himself to Greenland to tell its people they will “one way or another become American”, his threat is sincere. But in many cases the erosion of US influence is just collateral damage from reckless government policies. Whereas Chinese and even Russian aid workers arrived on the ground within days of Myanmar’s earthquake last week, American assistance – hobbled by the dismantling of USAID – is “yet to arrive”. The administration’s opposition to immigration is so acute that, with the odd exception of white South Africans, “none of the world’s huddled masses are welcome in America”. Not only are ambitious foreigners no longer coming, but American scientists “are looking for jobs abroad”. It has taken this administration a quarter of a year to besmirch a brand that took a quarter of a millennium to build. “How long will it take to repair?”

📱🔥 Some academics have taken to using “burner” phones and laptops at international conferences, says John Naughton in The Observer, in case – as happened with one French scientist – American immigration officers find messages criticising Trump and block them from entering the US. Security-conscious people used to do the same thing 15 years ago when travelling to China.