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    Trump will ‘buckle under pressure’ if Europe bands together over tariffs, German economy minister says

    “That is what I see, that Donald Trump will buckle under pressure, that he corrects his announcements under pressure,” German economy minister Robert Habeck said Thursday.
    Elsewhere, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he believed the latest tariff decisions by Trump were “fundamentally wrong,” according to a CNBC translation.
    On Wednesday, Trump imposed 20% levies on the European Union, including on the bloc’s foremost economy Germany.

    BERLIN, GERMANY – FEBRUARY 24: Robert Habeck, chancellor candidate of the German Greens Party, speaks to the media the day after German parliamentary elections on February 24, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. The Greens came in fourth place with 11.6% of the vote, down 2.9% from the previous election. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
    Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    U.S. President Donald Trump will “buckle under pressure” and alter his tariff policies if Europe bands together, acting German economy minister Robert Habeck said Thursday.
    “That is what I see, that Donald Trump will buckle under pressure, that he corrects his announcements under pressure, but the logical consequence is that he then also needs to feel the pressure,” he said during a press conference, according to a CNBC translation.

    “And this pressure now needs to be unfolded, from Germany, from Europe in the alliance with other countries, and then we will see who is the stronger one in this arm wrestle,” Habeck said.
    Allowing Trump to persist or trying to appease him would not be a successful strategy under any circumstances, he added, noting that the response should be a “day of determination.”
    Strategically, the aim should be to avoid tariffs and a trade war, but the question was how to get there, the economy minister said.

    Habeck also urged Europe to make strategic investments to become more independent — for example by improving its cloud infrastructure and expanding its artificial intelligence and space capabilities.
    “We just can’t rely on everyone only being friendly to us anymore,” he said, pointing to having learned a lesson the hard way when Germany’s economy was hit badly due to its dependence on Russian energy after the Russia-Ukraine war started.

    Germany paid a “high price for this blindness, for this economic and energy policy blindness” and that should now not repeat itself in “all other areas,” Habeck said, suggesting that this was a task for the incoming government.

    ‘Poorly thought through decisions’

    Elsewhere, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he believed the latest tariff decisions by Trump were “fundamentally wrong,” according to a CNBC translation.
    The measures are an attack on the global trade order and the “poorly thought through decisions” will result in suffering for the global economy, Scholz said. The U.S. administration is on a path that will only lead to losers, he added.

    On Wednesday, Trump imposed 20% levies on the European Union, including on the bloc’s foremost economy Germany, as he signed a sweeping and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy.
    Germany is widely regarded as one of the countries likely to be most impacted by Trump’s tariffs, given its heavy economic reliance on trade.
    The U.S. is Germany’s most important trade partner ahead of China, with trade turnover — the sum of exports and imports — amounting to 252.8 billion euros ($278.7 billion) in 2024, according to German statistics office Destatis. Last year the U.S. was also the recipient of the biggest proportion of German exports.
    The German index DAX was last down around 1.6% by 10:42 a.m. London time, while German government bonds were sharply lower. The yield on the 10-year Bund was last down by over 7 basis points to 2.648%, while the 2-year Bund yield tumbled more than 11 basis points to 1.93%.

    EU preparing countermeasures

    Also responding to the White House developments, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the European Union was preparing measures to counter the latest tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, if negotiations fail.
    “We are prepared to respond,” she said. “We are now preparing for further countermeasures, to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail.”
    But von der Leyen also called for a shift “from confrontation to negotiation” as she suggested it was not too late for talks between the EU and the U.S.
    Germany’s Scholz on Thursday echoed calls for cooperation and suggested Europe would defend its interests.
    “Europe will react united, strong, and proportionally to the decision by the U.S.,” he said. More

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    European Union vows countermeasures to Trump tariffs if talks fail, von der Leyen says

    The European Union is “preparing for further countermeasures, to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail,” Ursula von der Leyen said early on Thursday.
    U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 20% tariffs on the EU on Wednesday.
    Von der Leyen also said that “there seems to be no order in the disorder, no clear path to the complexity and chaos that is being created.”

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen holds a joint press conference with Antonio Costa at the end of the European Council Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on March 20, 2025.
    Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

    The European Union is preparing measures to counter the latest tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, if negotiations with the White House fail, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
    Trump imposed 20% levies on the bloc on Wednesday as he signed a sweeping and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy. Over 180 countries and territories are subject to these new duties, a list published by Trump and the White House showed.

    In a livestreamed broadcast in the early hours of Thursday, EU chief von der Leyen suggested the bloc was ready to retaliate to the U.S. steps against it.
    “We are prepared to respond,” she said. “We are now preparing for further countermeasures, to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail.”
    Calling for negotiations, von der Leyen said that the EU would work towards reducing barriers, not raising them.
    “It is not too late to address concerns through negotiations,” she said. “Let’s move from confrontation to negotiation.”
    Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s commissioner for trade and economic security, on Thursday said that he would be speaking to his U.S. counterparts on Friday.

    “Unjustified tariffs inevitably backfire. We’ll act in a calm, carefully phased, unified way, as we calibrate our response, while allowing adequate time for talks. But we won’t stand idly by, should we be unable to reach a fair deal,” he said on social media platform X.
    “I’ll speak to my U.S. counterparts tomorrow.”

    ‘Immense consequences’

    Von der Leyen slammed Trump’s move, saying that it was a “major blow” to the world economy and that it would “massively suffer.”
    “There seems to be no order in the disorder, no clear path to the complexity and chaos that is being created as all U.S. trading partners are hit,” von der Leyen said.
    She also warned of “immense consequences,” saying the effect would be felt immediately and that consumers around the world as well as businesses would be negatively impacted.
    “Uncertainty will spiral and trigger the rise of further protectionism. The consequences will be dire for millions of people around the globe, also for the most vulnerable countries, which are now subject to some of the highest U.S. tariffs.”
    The EU would work to support impacted sectors, including the steel, autos, pharma and other industries, von der Leyen noted.
    The EU chief said that she agreed with Trump that some countries were taking unfair advantage of the current rules in world trade and the EU was ready to support efforts to make the global trading system “fit for the realities of the global economy.”
    However, she also warned the U.S. ‘reaching for tariffs as your first and last tool will not fix it.”

    EU countermeasures so far

    Von der Leyen on Thursday said that any fresh countermeasures against the U.S. would expand on those already in the works by the EU.
    The bloc had already announced retaliatory tariffs last month after the U.S. imposed tariffs on , saying the measures aimed to protect European workers and consumers. The EU at the time said it would introduce counter-tariffs on 26 billion euros ($28 billion) worth of U.S. goods.
    Previously suspended duties — which were at least partially in place during Trump’s first term as president — are set to be re-introduced alongside a slew of additional duties on further goods.
    Industrial-grade steel and aluminum, other steel and aluminum semi-finished and finished products, along with their derivative commercial products, such as machinery parts and knitting needles were set to be included. A range of other products such as bourbon, agricultural products, leather goods, home appliances and more were also on the EU’s list.
    Following a postponement, these tariffs are expected to come into effect around the middle of April. More

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    Trump Tariffs Aim to Revive U.S. Manufacturing. Is That Possible?

    President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on a scale unseen in nearly a century is more than a shot across the bow at U.S. trading partners. If kept in place, the import taxes will also launch an economic project of defiant nostalgia: an attempt to reclaim America’s place as a dominant manufacturing power.In the postwar heyday of American manufacturing, which endured into the 1970s, nearly 20 million people once made their living from manufacturing. The United States was a leading producer of motor vehicles, aircraft and steel, and manufacturing accounted for more than a quarter of total employment.By the end of last year, after a fundamental reordering of the world economy, manufacturing employed about 8 percent of the nation’s workers.Now, the country is wealthier than ever. Yet the economy looks, and feels, quite different — dominated by service work of all types, both lucrative and low-wage. Industrial hubs in the American interior have often withered, leaving many strongholds of Mr. Trump’s base on the economic fringes.Protectionist industrial policies, of varying methods and attitudes, have been on the rise for a decade — from the time Mr. Trump began his first campaign for president in 2015 through the presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and now with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office again.But the president’s announcement, at a flag-draped Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, represented a tectonic shift in U.S. economic policy, the fullest repudiation of an embrace of global free trade that began on a bipartisan basis in the 1980s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How did the U.S. arrive at its tariff figures?

    The White House Wednesday listed tariff rates for different countries. It didn’t take long for market observers to try and reverse engineer the formula.
    Many observers said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.
    Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach to calculate tariffs and would imply the U.S. would have only looked at the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.
    The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus.

    U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
    Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

    Markets have turned their sights on how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration arrived at the figures behind the sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports declared Wednesday, which sent global financial markets tumbling and sparked concerns worldwide.
    Trump and the White House shared a series of charts on social media detailing the tariff rates they say other countries impose on the U.S. Those purported rates include the countries’ “Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers.”

    An adjacent column shows the new U.S. tariff rates on each country, as well as the European Union.

    Arrows pointing outwards

    Chart of reciprocal tariffs.
    Courtesy: Donald Trump via Truth Social

    Those rates are, in most cases, roughly half of what the Trump administration claims each country has “charged” the U.S. CNBC could not independently verify the U.S. administration’s data on these duties.
    It didn’t take long for market observers to try and reverse engineer the formula — to confusing results. Many, including journalist and author James Surowiecki, said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.
    Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach to calculate tariffs and would imply the U.S. would have only looked at the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.
    For instance, the U.S. claims that China charges a tariff of 67%. The U.S. ran a deficit of $295.4 billion with China in 2024, while imported goods were worth $438.9 billion, according to official data. When you divide $295.4 billion by $438.9 billion, the result is 67%! The same math checks out for Vietnam.

    “The formula is about trade imbalances with the U.S. rather than reciprocal tariffs in the sense of tariff level or non-tariff level distortions. This makes it very difficult for Asian, particularly the poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand to reduce tariffs in the short-term as the benchmark is buying more American goods than they export to the U.S., ” according to Trinh Nguyen, senior economist of emerging Asia at Natixis.
    “Given that U.S. goods are much more expensive, and the purchasing power is lower for countries targeted with the highest levels of tariffs, such option is not optimal. Vietnam, for example, stands out in having the 4th largest trade surplus with the U.S., and has already lowered tariffs versus the U.S. ahead of tariff announcement without any reprieve,” Nguyen said.
    The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus.

    The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative laid out its approach on its website, which appeared somewhat similar to what cyber sleuths had already figured out, barring a few differences.
    “While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero. If trade deficits are persistent because of tariff and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair,” the website reads.
    The U.S.T.R. also included estimates for the elasticity of imports to import prices—in other words, how sensitive demand for foreign goods is to prices—and the passthrough of higher tariffs into higher prices of imported goods.
    This screenshot of the U.S.T.R. webpage shows the methodology and formula that was used in greater detail:

    A screenshot from the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

    Some analysts acknowledged that the U.S. government’s methodology could give it more wiggle room to reach an agreement.
    “All I can say is that the opaqueness surrounding the tariff numbers may add some flexibility in making deals, but it could come at a cost to US credibility,” according to Rob Subbaraman, head of global macro research at Nomura.
     — CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this piece. More

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    Japan Lacks a ‘Viable Option’ for Retaliating to Trump’s Tariffs

    After being smacked with double-digit percentage tariffs by a key ally, Japan finds itself with few retaliatory options.Since President Trump began threatening broad tariffs in January, Japan has pursued a conciliatory strategy, with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba pledging in February to boost U.S. investment to $1 trillion.Up until the day before Mr. Trump’s tariff announcements on Wednesday, prominent business executives in Tokyo said they were hopeful Japan would be spared. Those hopes were dashed when Mr. Trump said U.S. imports from Japan would face a 24 percent tariff. Last week, he said that cars, Japan’s top export to the United States, would be subject to a 25 percent tax.While other places affected by the U.S. tariffs — including the European Union, Canada and China — have declared their intentions to retaliate with their own taxes on American goods, Japanese officials have refrained from talking about a similar move.That is in part because the state of Japan’s economy and the importance of its trade with the United States would make it difficult to do so, analysts say.Over the past few years, inflation, largely driven by rising energy and food costs, has surged in Japan and strained its economy. Japan’s imports from the United States are largely commodities, including natural gas and agricultural products.That is why imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports would be “self-defeating” and “simply not a viable option,” said Stefan Angrick, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in Tokyo. “The only remaining strategy is to shift the narrative and emphasize Japan’s willingness to import more commodities,” he said.American officials, including Mr. Trump, have repeatedly raised concerns about Japan’s non-tariff trade barriers, specifically citing import restrictions on agricultural products like rice and automotive standards that they contend put American manufacturers at a disadvantage.At a news conference on Thursday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, declined to comment on what Japan would be willing to consider conceding in trade negotiations with the United States. Other officials, including the prime minister, refrained from talk of retaliation.Japan’s standards for certifying automobiles for use in the country are based on those established by the United Nations, Mr. Hayashi said. He also said that he has explained to his counterparts in Washington the details and logic behind Japan’s rice-import policies.“Despite this, it is extremely regrettable that the U.S. government has announced the recent reciprocal tariff measures mentioning rice,” Mr. Hayashi said. “In any case, Japan will continue to strongly urge the United States to review its measures.” More

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    ‘Absolutely nothing good’ coming out of Trump’s tariff announcement: Analysts react to latest U.S. levies

    Analysts generally had a pessimistic take on the announcement, with some even predicting an increased risk of a recession for the U.S.
    Most note that the tariff will raise rates to levels not seen since the early 20th century, when the U.S. enacted the Smoot/Hawley Act.

    Charts that show the “reciprocal tariffs” the U.S. is charging other countries are on display at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. 
    Alex Wong | Getty Images

    U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday laid out the “reciprocal tariff” rates that more than 180 countries and territories will face under his sweeping new trade policy.
    The announcement sent stocks tumbling and prompted investors to seek refuge in assets perceived to be safe.

    Analysts generally had a pessimistic take on the announcement, with some even predicting an increased risk of a recession for the U.S.
    Here is a compilation of reactions from experts and analysts:
    Tai Hui, APAC Chief Market Strategist, J.P. Morgan Asset Management
    “Today’s announcement could potentially raise U.S. average tariff rates to levels not seen since the early 20th century. If these tariffs persist, they could materially impact inflation, as U.S. manufacturing struggles to ramp up capacity and supply chains pass on costs to consumers. For instance, advanced semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan may not absorb tariff costs without viable substitutes.
    “The scale of these tariffs raises concerns about growth risks. U.S. consumers may cut back on spending due to pricier imports, and businesses might delay capital expenditures amid uncertainty about the tariffs’ full impact and potential retaliation from trade partners.”

    David Rosenberg, President and founder of Rosenberg Research
    “There are no winners in a global trade war. And when people have to realize, when you hear this clap trap about how consumers in United States are not going to bear any brunt. It’s all going to be the foreign producer. I roll my eyes whenever I hear that, because it shows a zero understanding of how trade works, because it is the importing business that pays the tariff, not the exporting country.
    And a lot of that will get transmitted into the consumer, so we’re in for several months of a very significant price shock for the American household sector.”
    Anthony Raza, Head of Multi-Asset Strategy, UOB Asset Management
    “They’ve come up with the most extreme numbers that we can’t even comprehend. How they’re coming up with these? And then in terms of timing, I think we were hopeful that maybe this would be something that was rolled out over the course of a year, that would allow like time for negotiations or whatever. But it does seem like the timing is much more immediate and is, again, worse than our worst-case type scenario in terms of flexibility.”
    David Roche, Strategist, Quantum Strategy”These tariffs are not transitional. They are core to President Trump’s beliefs. They mark the shift from globalisation to isolationist, nationalist policies – and not just for economics. The process will last several years and be felt for decades. There will be spillovers into multiple policy domains such as geopolitics.Right now, expect retaliation, not negotiation by the EU (targeting U.S. services) and China (focusing on U.S. strategic and business interests). The Rose Garden tariffs will cement the bear market. They will cause global stagflation as well as U.S. and EU recession.”
    Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Chief Economist, AMP
    “Our rough calculation is that the 2nd April announcement will take the U.S. average tariff rate to above levels seen in the 1930s after the Smoot/Hawley tariffs which will in turn add to the risk of a U.S. recession – via a further blow to confidence and supply chain disruptions – and a bigger hit to global growth.
    “The risk of a US recession is probably now around 40% and global growth could be pushed towards 2% (from around 3% currently) depending on how significant retaliation is and how countries like China respond with policy stimulus.”
    Tom Kenny, Senior International Economist, ANZ
    “Today’s announced US reciprocal tariffs are worse than expected. The effective tariff rate on U.S. merchandise imports is likely to climb to the 20-25% range, the highest since the early 1900s.Yields on inflation-indexed bonds were higher and equities sold off after the announcement, suggesting the market thinks these tariffs will hurt growth and add to inflation. Market pricing of the federal funds rate points to cuts from the Federal Reserve coming sooner.” More

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    China Will Face at Least 54 Percent Tariffs With Trump’s New Order

    With the new tariffs announced on Wednesday in Washington, President Trump has now imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods of 54 percent — an extremely heavy burden that will cause companies to look elsewhere for suppliers.Mr. Trump added a 34 percent tariff on imports from China, to take effect on April 9, on top of two earlier rounds of 10 percent tariffs he had already imposed.Those are just the new tariffs on China since Mr. Trump started his second term in office. During his first term, he put tariffs of 25 percent on a wide range of Chinese industrial goods and 7.5 percent on some consumer goods, which former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left in place.Mr. Trump’s latest action, on what he described as “Liberation Day,” has provoked considerable anger in China. On Thursday, China’s commerce ministry vowed to take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.”Many government officials and experts had been hoping that Mr. Trump might follow the World Trade Organization’s free trade rules.He Weiwen, a retired Ministry of Commerce official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing research group, said that Mr. Trump’s actions were the biggest violation ever of the rules of the W.T.O. or its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.The latest tariffs “will not liberate America, but will only cause new suffering to the American economy and American families,” Mr. He said.China’s official news agency, Xinhua, published an editorial describing the Trump administration’s tariffs as “self-defeating bullying,” and said Washington was “turning trade into an over-simplistic tit-for-tat game.” More

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    How Are Trump’s Tariff Rates Calculated?

    As he unfurled his list of tariffs targeting most of America’s trading partners, President Trump repeatedly stressed that each nation’s rate was reciprocal — reflecting the barriers they had long erected to U.S. goods.He said little about the methodology behind those calculations, but a possible answer emerged later on Wednesday. Each country’s new tariff rate appeared to be derived by:Taking the trade deficit that America runs with that nation and dividing it by the exports that country sent into the United States.Then, because Mr. Trump said he was being “kind,” the final tariff number was cut in half.James Surowiecki, a financial writer and book author, first pointed out the trend in a post on X. His comment set off widespread speculation, given that Mr. Trump previously said each nation’s tariff rate would be “the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating.”Those non-monetary barriers include a host of hard-to-quantify laws and other policies that Mr. Trump sees as the primary reason that the U.S. experiences such trade imbalances in the first place. (There are exceptions: Some nations face only a standard 10 percent minimum tariff starting this month.)In an earlier briefing with reporters, White House officials said the figures were calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers using well-established methodologies. The official added the model was based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all the unfair trade practices and “cheating” that country has done.The White House later clarified its methodology in this post. Though it uses some mathematical symbols that might be hard to parse, it confirms that the formula is essentially based on the U.S. trade deficit with a foreign country, divided by the country’s exports.“It was always going to be a really difficult exercise to come up with a very precise reciprocal tariff rate,” said Emily Kilcrease, the director of the Energy, Economics and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security and a former deputy assistant U.S. trade representative.“Given what seems to be their desire to get something out quickly, it appears what they’ve done is come up with an approximation that is consistent with their policy goals,” she said. More