President Trump threatened additional tariffs on China and markets bounced around amid the new US tariff policy that is set to fully roll out on Wednesday.
Trump posted that “if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”
Trump and his top advisers retrenched over the weekend, with the president suggesting that equity markets may need to “take medicine” and posting that the new tariffs are “already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold.”
Trump also reiterated that the impetus behind the tariff policy is trade deficits: “I spoke to a lot of leaders … from all over the world. … I said ‘we’re not going to have deficits with your country’ … to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or, at worst, we’re going to be breaking even.”
On April 2, Trump announced a blanket 10% tariff on all goods coming into the US. He also added new duties on goods from 185 countries, which the president described as the “worst offenders” in terms of perceived unfairness on trade, slated to kick in on April 9.
Read more: What Trump’s tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet
American customs officials began collecting the new 10% tariff on imports from many countries on Saturday morning after the US stock market saw its worst week since 2020.
Various countries are still deciding how to respond (or not), and companies have begun adjusting to the new reality — largely by raising prices. Some countries responded with new tariffs of their own: Canada announced new duties on certain vehicles imported from the US, and China announced that it would impose countermeasures against the US starting April 10, including a 34% tariff on US goods.
The European Union is reportedly preparing an initial set of countermeasures. The tariff rate applied to the 27-nation bloc of EU countries under the policy is 20%, and about 70% of the EU’s exports to the US are covered. Trump adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, appearing at an event on Saturday, said that “Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation.”
“This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime,” Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer and former White House trade adviser during Trump’s first term, told Reuters.
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