SOCIAL MEDIA ECONOMIST: Stocks rebounded yesterday after President Trump said he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for being slow to cut interest rates.

  Investors were also encouraged by Trump’s announcement that the 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods will come down substantially. “We’re going to be very nice, they’re going to be very nice, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

  The federal reserve’s independence from the White House is believed to bring stability to the economy by being divorced from politics and, in the case of Trump, his personal whims. The Fed was able to rein in inflation during the Biden administration with painfully high interest rates.

  Under the law, members of the federal Reserve board can be removed only “for cause,”  generally accepted to mean serious misconduct. But the language leaves room for Trump to invent a cause if he wishes.

  In a separate development, the International Monetary Fund warned that Trump’s trade war will deeply hurt US economic growth.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: 

— The State department announced major staff cuts and a reorganization just days after Secretary of State called leaked reports of a reorganization “fake news.” The changes announced are considered to be only the first steps. 

  The most significant change is the elimination of the office for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, which is charged with advancing American values around the world. Trump administration officials denounce the office as a hotbed of liberal activism.

  The announced plan includes cutting 700 employees and reducing the agency’s total number of bureaus and offices from 734 to 602. 

— Elon Musk’s Tesla car company reported a 71 percent drop in profits for the first three months of the year, prompting the executive to say that he’s going to wind up his involvement with his Department of Government efficiency and get back to business. Musk told investors that he would reduce his government work to about two days a week

  Tesla sales have dropped in the face of Chinese competition, but also a  lack of new models and Musk’s work in cutting government and his support for far-right causes, which has moved liberals and environmentalists to stop buying his electric cars.

  Musk also says China’s trade war blockage of exporting magnets and rare earth metals is crimping his development of humanoid robots.

— Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared yesterday that “sugar is poison” and that he is working with the food industry to remove petroleum-based food colorings from their products by 2026. Kennedy said,  “Four years from now, we are going to have most of these products off the market, or you will know about them when you go to the grocery store.” 

— A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, the government funded operation that broadcasts news and information around the world in multiple languages. Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Trump administration to return VOA employees and contractors to their work.

THE CLOCK STOPS: In what amounts to an earthquake in television news, CBS’s “60 Minutes” Executive Producer Bill Owens announced his resignation, citing corporate and political encroachments on the show’s journalistic independence. He is only the third executive producer of  the magazine show that’s been on the air for 57 years.

  Owens said in a memo to the staff that, “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

  He was reported to be fighting back tears as he announced his decision in a staff meeting.

  President Trump sued “60 Minutes” for $10 billion claiming that the show had edited an interview with his presidential opponent Kamala Harris to make her look better. CBS’s owner Paramount has been dealing with the lawsuit that has become a problem for its proposed merger with the company Skydance. Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone wants the Trump administration to approve for the multibillion-dollar sale of her company. 

  CBS also placed another layer of management over “60 Minutes” for the first time in its history. Owens said in a recorded meeting that, “In a million years, the corporation didn’t know what was coming up — they trusted ‘60 Minutes’ to report the stories and program the broadcast the way ‘60 Minutes’ saw fit,”  and any interference created “a really slippery slope.”

THE SPIN RACK:  A federal jury in Manhattan yesterday shot down the libel lawsuit brought by former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin against The NY Times. In 2017 the newspaper published  then quickly corrected and apologized for an editorial that wrongly suggested Palin’s rhetoric and political website had incited the shooting of Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The jury took just two hours to find in favor of the Times. — As many as two dozen tourists were shot dead by militants yesterday in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir. No group has claimed responsibility but the area has been claimed by both India and Pakistan since 1947. — The second trial has begun outside Boston for Karen Read, who is accused of running over her police officer boyfriend and leaving him in the snow to die.

BELOW THE FOLD: The Wall Street Journal reports on new data that $1 trillion of wealth was created for the 19 richest American households  in 2024, more than the value of Switzerland’s entire economy.

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