Hi Global Recap readers,
Last year, a few readers emailed me questioning a point I’ve made before:
“Tariffs imposed by the US government are paid by US importers, not foreign exporters.”
It’s just the legal mechanics: the tariff is owed by the US importer to US Customs, even if some people still talk as if Chinese exporters are somehow paying it at the dock in China.
It’s no secret that that’s one reason I’ve been skeptical of President Trump’s tariff strategy as a long-term way to pressure other countries.
And it seems like more people online are starting to come around to that view. 👇🏼
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES
Tariff Refund Questions
President Trump on “Liberation Day,” April 2, 2025.
Remember the tariffs President Trump imposed on other countries using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act?
In February, the Supreme Court killed that approach and the trade court later forced the government to start paying the money back.
Now, the government is taking tariff refund claims.
It's more than $166 billion, plus interest.
Here’s why people are calling this unfair:
The importers who paid the tariffs can apply.
The consumers who got stuck with the higher prices after those costs were passed on? They can’t.
🇨🇳 CHINA
China Pushes into Pacific
China sent a naval group through the Yokoate Waterway into the western Pacific.
The route ran closer to Japan’s mainland than China’s usual Pacific transit.
This came just after Japan joined US-Philippine Balikatan drills with combat troops for the first time.
Those drills involve 17,000 troops and a live-fire anti-ship missile exercise in the South China Sea.
Beijing called the transit “routine,” but the timing feels a little too convenient.
📌 Context. This comes amid months of strain after Japanese PM Takaichi said Japan could (in theory) get involved if fighting broke out around Taiwan. China also protested Japan's destroyer Ikazuchi sailing through the Taiwan Strait on April 17.
🇲🇽 MEXICO
Crash Raises US Questions
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum
4 officials died Sunday when a truck went off a mountain road and into a ravine after an operation to destroy clandestine drug labs in Chihuahua, Mexico.
The dead were 2 Chihuahua investigative officials and 2 US Embassy instructors.
Mexican President Sheinbaum said on Monday that Mexico's security cabinet wasn't told.
She added that any work between a state government and foreign officials without federal approval would violate Mexican law.
Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui first said embassy officials were there for routine training tied to the operation, but later backtracked, saying no US agents helped secure the lab and that embassy staff only arrived hours after the mission was over.
🇵🇰 PAKISTAN
Vance Heads To Islamabad
US Vice President JD Vance boarding Air Force Two after Iran-US talks in Islamabad, April 12, 2026.
US Vice President Vance is expected to depart for Islamabad by Tuesday morning for Iran talks.
The ceasefire was due to expire Tuesday night US time (early Wednesday in Pakistan), before Trump said he was extending the deadline to Wednesday evening.
Trump threatened new bombing against bridges and power plants if no deal is made.
Iran initially dragged its feet, but its "Supreme Leader" eventually signed off on the talks, late Monday night.
President Trump is set to appear on Squawk Box (pre-market talk show) at 8:30 am ET, and a lot of people are speculating that it’s an attempt to juice the market ahead of negotiations.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES
Insider Trading Before Trump?
The First Lady of the United States, Melania Trump (left), Barron Trump (center), and the President of the United States, Donald Trump (right).
Pattern. There’s a long-running meme online about whales loading up right before President Trump makes a huge market-moving announcement.
That’s basically the origin of “is that you, Barron?”—a joke that attributes those absurdly well-timed bets to Trump’s 20-year-old son.
People have been spotting the same pattern across oil, equities, and prediction markets all through his second term.
But the problem is, it's easy to spot these bets, but extremely hard to prove who's behind them.
Still, it’s treated like an “open secret” online: people keep speculating that someone inside, or close to, the Trump administration is making trades off nonpublic information.
Oil
We’ve touched on a few of these moves over the past year, but Nick Marsh recently put the whole long-running theory together in a single BBC piece. You may remember some of these classics:
On 9 March 2026, traders made a huge burst of bets on oil falling, 47 minutes before a phone interview went public where Trump said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil reversed sharply from its highs, which turned those early bets into huge wins.
A similar thing happened on 23 March, when trading in Brent crude jumped before Trump posted that Washington had held "VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS" with Tehran and talked about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil fell sharply right after that post too.
Stocks
I don’t need to tell you when President Trump made the tariff pause announcement.
The same kind of timing showed up around the 9 April 2025 tariff pause. Traders started making unusually large bets on the stock market going up just before Trump paused many of the new tariffs, and the S&P 500 then surged 9.5%.
”Prediction” Market
Prediction platforms had their own version of this. One account won ~$436,000 betting Nicolás Maduro would be out by the end of January after US forces seized him on 3 January 2026, and six accounts made $1.2 million betting on a US strike on Iran by 28 February.
