Evelyn Reynolds

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    Walmart Says Trump’s Tariffs Have Added Uncertainty to Its Outlook

    The timing was a bit awkward.Walmart’s investor event — which happens every two years and aims to showcase the company’s strengths and strategy for growth — also happened to fall on the same day that U.S.-imposed tariffs went into effect worldwide and a trade war heated up.As the largest retailer in the United States, Walmart relies on suppliers from around the world. And for the Wall Street analysts who attended the event in Dallas on Wednesday, tariffs were top of mind.Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive, acknowledged the uncertainty. In response to one of several questions from analysts about tariffs, he said: “There’s so many variables playing out in terms of what costs are going to be, where people source from. We’re going have to manage this as we always do, daily.”Or by the minute.As the event got underway on Wednesday, the United States had imposed worldwide tariffs, including a levy of 104 percent on Chinese goods, and China quickly retaliated with 84 percent tariffs on U.S. goods. Mr. McMillon, speaking just after Beijing’s additional tariffs went into effect, said the situation was “very fluid.” In fact, not long after Mr. McMillon’s question-and-answer session with analysts, President Trump said he was pausing his worldwide reciprocal tariffs for 90 days and raising the rate on China to 125 percent.During the session, Mr. McMillon emphasized that Walmart was well placed to cope with uncertainty, having navigated “the period after 9/11, the global financial crisis, a pandemic and more recently high inflation.” Walmart’s customer base includes a large number of lower-income shoppers, who have less capacity to absorb the higher prices that the tariffs could bring.John David Rainey, Walmart’s chief financial officer, emphasized that two-thirds of what Walmart sells in the United States is made, grown or assembled domestically; the figure includes groceries, which generally have lower margins. The other third of what Walmart sells comes from all over the world, especially from China and Mexico, he said.Mr. Rainey said the tariffs had made it harder for Walmart to predict its first-quarter operating income growth. “We’re one week into this new tariff environment, and we’re still working through what this means for us,” he said. “For the current quarter, the uncertainty and decline in consumer sentiment has led to a little more sales volatility week to week and, frankly, day to day.”Walmart reiterated expectations for first-quarter sales growth of about 3 to 4 percent and said its annual sales growth guidance remained unchanged, with customers still expected to migrate toward e-commerce and delivery, key parts of Walmart’s strategy. Walmart will report its first-quarter results on May 15. More

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    Lesotho Has Few Options to Counter 50% U.S. Tariffs

    In Lesotho, the small southern African nation that is among the countries hardest hit by President Trump’s new tariffs, business owners were meeting on Wednesday to strategize their response.For a country with an economy worth just $2.1 billion, few options are on the table.Mr. Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on Lesotho, owing to the trade deficit between the country of 2.3 million people and the United States. Only Saint Pierre, a sparsely populated French archipelago off the coast of Canada, was hit the same tariff increase.On Wednesday, Lesotho’s private sector was looking to the government for answers. The government, facing the prospect of huge job losses, was preparing to make its case to the White House.“There’s a lot of panic,” said Thabo Qhesi, a business analyst who attended the business owners’ meeting, held in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru. The most anxious people in the room, he said in a telephone interview, were those connected to Lesotho’s textile and apparel industries, which export about 70 percent of their products to the United States.“They have no option but to close down or relocate to the countries where it would be more profitable to them,” Mr. Qhesi said.Most of Lesotho’s garment factories are owned by Chinese and Taiwanese companies that set up shop to take advantage of preferential terms allowed under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a trade agreement with the United States.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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    Jamie Dimon says a recession is ‘likely outcome’ from Trump’s tariff turmoil

    Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during the 2025 National Retirement Summit in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
    Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday he sees the U.S. economy likely headed to recession as President Donald Trump’s tariffs roil financial markets.
    With the trade war between the U.S. and China intensifying, stocks and bonds sold off aggressively again in morning trade. Stock market futures slumped and bond yields spiked amid concerns over financial and economic stability brought on by the tit-for-tat exchange between the two nations.

    “I think probably [a recession is] s a likely outcome, because markets, I mean, when you see a 2000-point decline [in the Dow Jones Industrial Average], it sort of feeds on itself, doesn’t it,” Dimon said on Fox Business’ “Mornings With Maria” show. “It makes you feel like you’re losing money in your 401(k), you’re losing money in your pension. You’ve got to cut back.”
    Recession fears have been rising on Wall Street as the Trump tariffs spur uncertainty about how far the trade war will escalate.
    In the latest development, China said it will slap an 84% tariff on all U.S. goods, up 50 percentage points from the previous level, as U.S. reciprocal duties take effect around the world. Dow futures were off more than 800 points while the 10-year Treasury yields soared nearly 20 basis points, or 0.2 percentage point.
    JPMorgan economists expect U.S. gross domestic product to contract 0.3% this year, a mild recessionary call but coming after a strong year for growth.
    “Markets aren’t always right, but sometimes they are right,” Dimon said. “I think this time they are right because they’re just pricing uncertainty [at] the macro level and uncertainty [at] the micro level, at the actual company level, and then how it affects consumer sentiment. It’s hard to tell.”

    In the past, Dimon has been a supporter of tariffs.
    During a January interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the executive said people should “get over it” regarding tariffs and said a little inflation would be worth it to preserve national security.
    On Wednesday, he encouraged the U.S. to make deals with its trading partners while cautioning that market reaction could get worse if that doesn’t happen.
    “Take a deep breath, negotiate some trade deals. That’s the best thing they can do,” he said. “I’m taking a calm view. But I think it could get worse if we don’t make some progress here.”
    Separately, Dimon encouraged the Senate to confirm Fed Governor Michelle Bowman as vice chair for supervision, the chief overseer of the banking and finance system. Bowman is up for a confirmation hearing Thursday. More

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    China says it will continue to take ‘resolute and forceful’ countermeasures as U.S. tariffs kick in

    “If the U.S. genuinely wants to resolve the problem through dialogue and negotiation, it should show an attitude of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian said.
    In a separate official white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday, the Chinese authority said “if the U.S. insists on further escalating its economic and trade restrictions, China will resolutely counter and fight the U.S. to the end,” according to a CNBC translation.
    Beijing said it hoped the U.S. would “meet halfway” and immediately lift the unilateral trade barriers, while reiterating its openness to strengthen dialogue.

    04 March 2025, China, Peking: Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, answers questions from journalists. 
    Johannes Neudecker | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

    China’s foreign ministry reiterated Wednesday that Beijing will take “resolute and forceful” measures to protect its own interests, after net total tariffs of 104% on Chinese imports into the U.S. took effect.
    “If the U.S. genuinely wants to resolve the problem through dialogue and negotiation, it should show an attitude of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular press briefing.

    Echoing the commerce ministry’s comments on Tuesday, Lin said that “if the U.S. insists on fighting a tariff war and a trade war, China will “definitely fight to the end.”
    Last Friday, China’s Finance Ministry announced 34% in additional tariffs on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10, in retaliation for Trump imposing new levies of 34% on China.
    The across-the-board tariffs followed two previous rounds of 10%-15% tariffs, targeting mostly agricultural and energy products imported from the U.S. 
    According to Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, Trump’s tariffs would effectively wipe out Chinese exporters’ profits once U.S. import duties passed the 35% mark. After that, Chinese exporters will not sell to the U.S. at all, she said.
    In a separate official white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday, the Chinese authority said “if the U.S. insists on further escalating its economic and trade restrictions, China will resolutely counter and fight the U.S. to the end,” according to a CNBC translation.

    “The U.S. uses tariffs as a weapon to exert extreme pressure and seek selfish interests. This is a typical act of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying,” Beijing said in the white paper.
    The Chinese administration added that raising tariffs would not help with U.S. trade surplus issues, but will instead prompt great volatility in financial markets, exacerbating inflationary pressure and undermining American industries.
    Nonetheless, Beijing said it hoped the U.S. would “meet halfway” and immediately lift the unilateral trade barriers, while reiterating its openness to strengthen dialogue, manage difference and boost collaboration.
    China alleged it fulfilled the terms under the “Phase 1” trade deal that Trump struck with Beijing during his first presidential term, while claiming the U.S. violated certain mandates in the agreement. CNBC has reached out to the White House for comment regarding these claims.
    The deal required China to ramp up purchases of U.S. goods by $200 billion over a two-year period, but Beijing failed to meet its targets as the Covid-19 pandemic hit. More

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    China Hits Back Again at Trump, Bringing New Tariffs on U.S. Goods to 84%

    Beijing on Wednesday aimed the latest blow in the escalating trade war between the United States and Washington, with plans to raise new tariffs on all American imports by 84 percent within hours.China’s Ministry of Finance announced that it would match a 50 percent tariff on all imports from China that President Trump announced on Tuesday with its own 50 percent tariff. Last week, the two sides traded 34 percent tariffs on each other that are also taking effect now.The latest Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods are scheduled to take effect one minute into Thursday in China.China and the United States have now taken a series of steps in just one week that until very recently would have been almost unimaginable. For nearly half a century after the death of Mao Zedong, the two countries seemed on a course toward ever greater economic integration. Some experts even referred to the partnership of China and America as “Chimerica.”That partnership was occasionally cast in doubt during the trade war that Mr. Trump started in his first presidential term, but it survived. The two countries’ close trade ties have since gradually loosened. But their ties have been supplemented by a complex trading web that transfers Chinese components to countries like Vietnam and Mexico, where they are assembled into finished goods for shipment to the United States with little or no tariffs due.The pair of steep tariff increases by each side in the past week have now driven duties to a level that is likely to halt shipments of many products between the two countries, particularly if the tariffs endure more than a few weeks. Prohibitively high tariffs could ripple extensively through supply chains for many goods that rely on factories often in China but sometimes in the United States as well.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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    U.S. Bond Sell-Off is Another Worrisome Echo of the Liz Truss Fiasco

    The parallels between President Trump and Liz Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, are growing starker. Ms. Truss triggered market turmoil in 2022 after she proposed sweeping tax cuts that she proposed to pay for with massive government borrowing. Ms. Truss was ultimately doomed by fears of a credit crisis after yields on British government bonds spiked.Now, yields on U.S. Treasuries are beginning to rise. On Wednesday, in the hours after Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs went into effect, including levies of more than 100 percent on China, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury rose to as high as 4.5 percent, up from around 3.9 percent a few days ago. The yield on a 30-year bond briefly traded above 5 percent.Yields are still generally lower than when Mr. Trump was inaugurated, but a sustained sell-off of Treasuries would erase the key difference between the global market response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs and Ms. Truss’s tax cuts. In the immediate aftermath of the president’s tariff announcement, bond yields actually drifted down, even as the stock market plummeted and dollar weakened. This partly reflected expectations for slowing growth, but also served as a reminder of the traditional status of the American bond market as a haven for investors.Now, that safe-haven status may be crumbling, according to some analysts. At the extreme, that could raise pressure on the Federal Reserve to intervene, which is what the Bank of England did in 2022 to shore up the British bond market.In Britain’s case, those dramatic events forced Ms. Truss to rescind her proposed tax cuts, and the market chaos subsided. But Ms. Truss’s credibility was destroyed, and she was forced to step down after 44 days in office. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has shown no sign that he plans to reverse the tariffs, and for now, there appear to be few political levers to force his hand. More

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    Trump’s Tariff Goal Is to Eliminate Trade Deficits. Economists Have Doubts.

    Behind Trump’s new tariffs is a goal that is as ambitious as it is unrealistic: eliminating the bilateral trade deficit with every U.S. trading partner.Behind President Trump’s decision to hit some of America’s largest trading partners with stiff tariffs is his fixation on the trade deficit that the United States runs with other nations. But many economists say that is a poor metric for judging the quality of a trade relationship.The steep tariffs, which went into effect on nearly 60 trading partners on Wednesday, were calculated based on bilateral trade deficits, or the gap between what the United States sells to each country and what it buys.Mr. Trump has long viewed that gap as evidence that America is being “ripped off” by other countries. He argues that other countries’ unfair behavior has made trade so skewed and that the United States needs to be able to manufacture more of what it consumes. But economists argue this is a flawed way to approach the issue, given that bilateral trade deficits crop up for many reasons beyond unfair practices.“It’s totally silly,” Dani Rodrik, an economist who studies globalization at Harvard University, said of Mr. Trump’s focus on bilateral deficits. “There’s no other way to say it, it makes no sense.”Some economists do agree with the Trump administration that America’s overall trade deficit with the rest of the world reflects a problem for the U.S. economy, because the United States is so dependent on manufacturing elsewhere, including in China. But others don’t see it as an issue. And nearly all economists say that focusing on imbalances from country to country can be highly misleading.Last year, for example, the United States ran bilateral trade surpluses with 116 countries globally. It ran bilateral trade deficits with 114 countries, according to World Bank data.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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    China Condemns American ‘Protectionism’

    The Chinese government on Wednesday issued a lengthy denunciation of American trade policies, accusing the United States of years of protectionism and of violating the trade agreement the two sides had negotiated late in President Trump’s first term.The document was issued by Beijing’s cabinet information office several hours after Mr. Trump raised to 104 percent the extra tariffs on Chinese goods that he has imposed in his second term.The missive assailed the United States for preparing to impose additional 90 percent tariffs on May 2 on low-value parcels from China, which enter the United States with no customs inspection and no duties paid. The value of these so-called de minimis shipments has soared more than tenfold in recent years, exceeding $60 billion last year.There were a few unexpected conciliatory notes in the Chinese statement. “As two major countries at different stages of development with distinct economic systems, it is natural for China and the U.S. to have differences and frictions in their economic and trade cooperation,” it said.The report, issued by the State Council Information Office, criticized the United States for having considerably tightened export controls on the transfer to China of technologies with both civilian and military applications. The office suggested that this was a violation of the spirit of the so-called Phase One agreement reached in 2020. It said that China had abided by the pact, which also called for China to increase its purchases of American energy, agricultural products and manufactured goods, such as aircraft from Boeing, the American aerospace giant.“The Chinese side upheld the spirit of contract and endeavored to overcome multiple adverse factors, including the unexpected impact of the pandemic, subsequent supply chain disruptions, and global economic recession, to ensure implementation of the agreement,” the report said.China cited production delays by Boeing during the pandemic as reasons for not fulfilling that part of the pact. While Boeing has had delays, Chinese government-controlled airlines have refused to accept delivery of dozens of previously ordered planes for six years. At the same time, a heavily subsidized state-owned manufacturer, the Shanghai-based Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, is racing to make its own single-aisle passenger planes.The commentary praised de minimis shipments as giving greater choice to consumers and helping small businesses to compete. Large Chinese e-commerce sites like Shein and Temu have expanded their shipments from factories in China straight to American households.The document noted that China allows de minimis shipments of parcels through delivery services. But in practice, China allows a far narrower exemption from tariffs than the $800 under the U.S. de minimis rules, limiting the value of many exempted parcels to $27.The document also did not mention that Congress raised the American de minimis limit to $800 in 2016, from $200 previously, kicking off a huge surge in such shipments across the Pacific from China and fueling a boom for Chinese e-commerce companies. More