China announced a 34 percent tariff on American imports, matching Trump’s 34 percent tariff.
Markets fell for a second day in Asia and Europe. The S&P 500 dropped nearly 5 percent yesterday, its deepest retreat since the height of the pandemic.
Shares of Apple, which makes most of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas, fell 9 percent. Other big tech stocks, including Microsoft and Amazon, also slumped.
Trump insisted that the long-term payoff of the tariffs would be worth the pain. “The markets are going to boom,” he said. “The country is going to boom.”
Trump’s tariffs are estimated to cost American importers nearly $800 billion. These charts explain the costs.
Countries that built their economies on manufacturing goods for the U.S., like Bangladesh and Sri
Lanka, face the greatest risk from the tariffs. See where tariffs will hit hardest.
Canada introduced a 25 percent tariff on cars and trucks made in the U.S. in response to Trump’s auto tariffs, which took effect yesterday.
Trump’s tariffs could slow the shift to renewable energy: They affect most components of clean-energy production, from wind turbines blades to electric vehicle batteries.
Trump closed a loophole that had allowed retailers like Shein and Temu to ship Chinese goods directly to American shoppers without paying tariffs.
He imposed tariffs on Antarctic islands with more penguins than people.
Trump has been angry for decades about trade. He started talking publicly about tariffs in 1988, when he lost an auction for a piano used in the film “Casablanca” to a Japanese trading company. Read the story from 2019.
Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, and Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post reported how Trump came to impose the tariffs. After aides from a number of different government agencies came up with options for Trump to review, he decided instead on a different option, one that has drawn ridicule because it is crude and has nothing to do with tariffs at all. He reached the amounts of tariff levies by dividing the trade deficit of each nation (not including services) by the value of its imports and then dividing the final number by 2.
The reporters note that Trump didn’t land on a plan until less than three hours before he announced it, and made his choice with little input from business or foreign leaders. Neither Republican lawmakers nor the president’s team knew what Trump would do. “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f*ck anymore,” a White House official told the reporters. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f*ck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
While right-wing media and Republican lawmakers have worked hard to spin the economic crisis sparked by Trump’s tariffs, Financial Times chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch used charts on social media to show that Americans are not happy. Consumers give Trump’s economic plan the worst ratings of any administration’s economic policy since records began. He has had the same impact on economic uncertainty as the global coronavirus pandemic did. Almost 60% of Americans expect the economy to deteriorate over the next year, and they are very worried about job losses.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said today that Trump’s tariffs are “highly likely” to increase inflation and risk throwing people out of work. Economists at JPMorgan now place the odds of global recession at 60% unless the tariffs are ended.
Burn-Murdoch noted that despite the attempt of right-wing media to hide the crisis, more than half of Americans have heard unfavorable business news coverage of the government’s policies. While MAGA continues to approve of Trump, he’s rapidly losing support among the rest of the coalition that put him into office.