Economy

Amid rising trade tensions and tariff impositions, “on a relative basis, in the short term, Europe will be less affected than the U.S.,” Santander’s Ana Botín told CNBC.
Botín is not alone in her warning regarding tariffs’ negative impact on the U.S., with many analysts also saying the duties could ultimately cause higher inflation and strain the wallets of U.S. consumers.
Botín said recent unpredictability has clouded clarity over the European Central Bank’s next monetary policy steps. “There’s a case to be made for … rates coming down, but probably not as fast,” she said.

The White House’s protectionist policies could hit the U.S. harder than Europe in the short term, Banco Santander’s executive chair told CNBC on Thursday, as tariffs take a toll on domestic consumers.
“Tariffs [are] a tax. It’s a tax on the consumer.” Ana Botín said in an interview with CNBC’s Karen Tso in Brussels on the sidelines of the 2025 IIF European Summit. “Ultimately, the economy will pay a price. There will be less growth and there will be more inflation, other things equal.”

President Donald Trump has imposed — and at times suspended or revoked — a slew of tariffs on imports into the U.S. since his second administration began in January. He is seeking to promote domestic manufacturing and reduce trade deficits between the world’s largest economy and its commercial partners.
Botín is not alone in her warning regarding tariffs’ negative impact on the U.S., with many analysts also saying the duties could ultimately cause higher inflation and strain the wallets of U.S. consumers.
“On a relative basis, in the short term, Europe will be less affected than the U.S.,” Botín said Thursday.

Germany slams Trump’s 25% auto tariffs as bad news for U.S., EU and global trade

The imposition of blanket and country-specific duties — which include Wednesday’s news of a 25% tariff on all car imports into the U.S., effective from April 2 — have led to a number of retaliatory measures, including from the U.S.’ historical transatlantic ally, the European Union.
The bloc has also taken steps to bolster its autonomy through a package of proposals that could critically relax previously ironclad fiscal rules and mobilize nearly 800 billion euros ($863.8 billion) toward the region’s higher defense expenditures.

“European banks today are ready to lend more and support the economy more. We are strong. We have the capital,” Botín said. She also called for more “flexibility” in EU regulations that currently determine the “buffers” European lenders must hold on top of minimum capital requirements to bolster their resilience in the event of financial shocks.
The latest EU plans — and Germany’s steps to overhaul its long-standing debt policy to accommodate bolstered security spending — have boosted German and European defense stocks in recent weeks.
However, Germany is heavily reliant on its beleaguered auto sector — leaving the world’s third-largest exporter vulnerable to stark shifts in trade patterns and potentially exposed to recessionary risks as a result of U.S. tariffs, German central bank Governor Joachim Nagel warned earlier this month.

Botín — whose bank is the fifth-largest auto lender in the U.S. and has been pushing to expand its operations transatlantic while shuttering some physical branches in the U.K. — painted an optimistic picture of the state of the European economy, however.
“As of today, we believe the U.S. will slow down more than Europe, other things equal, because Germany is one third of the economy of the euro zone. That’s huge. So that’s going to give a boost,” she said, while also acknowledging that recent unpredictability has clouded clarity over the European Central Bank’s next monetary policy steps.
The central bank is broadly expected to proceed with a 25-basis-point interest rate cut during its next meeting on April 17. It also eased monetary policy in early March and signaled at the time that its monetary policy had become “meaningfully less restrictive.”
“The fundamentals of the economy are strong, but the uncertainty and volatility [are] at historic levels. So it’s a really hard decision. So there is no doubt that tariffs are a tax on consumer[s], it means slower growth, it means higher inflation,” Botín said.
“How much slower growth and how much higher inflation, we don’t know. But when you don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few months, you’re going to wait to buy a car, you’re going to wait to buy a fridge. If you’re a company … you’re going to wait to see where the tariffs hit harder. So this is going to mean a slowdown in activity. That’ll point toward lower rates. Inflation will point the other direction.”
Botín added that, as a result, “there’s a case to be made for … rates coming down, but probably not as fast.”
Speaking to CNBC’s Tso earlier in the day, ECB policymaker Pierre Wunsch also indicated that the U.S. tariff war had encumbered the bank’s decision-making.
“If we forget tariffs …. we were going in the right direction. Then the question was more a question of fine tuning of the pace of cuts and where we land,” he said. “I was like, you know, inflation might be the boring part of [20]25, and [20]25 is not a boring year. But if you add tariffs to the equation, it’s becoming more complicated.” More

This is an on-site version of the White House Watch newsletter. You can read the previous edition here. Sign up for free here to get it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Email us at [email protected] back to White House Watch. On today’s agenda: Economists are worried about the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the federal government — and not just because they’re worried about their own jobs.Slashing the federal workforce and research funding threatens the quality and credibility of “gold standard” US statistics, economists have warned. The impact could be felt across Wall Street’s $105tn stock and bond markets. The data — from the jobs report to inflation indices — can swing markets in milliseconds. These flagship reports also underpin policies that influence the trajectory of the world’s biggest economy. Ricardo Reis, a London School of Economics professor, who is a consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond told the FT: “All of the cuts in federal funding and some of the ones you’ve seen come out of Doge . . . they’re often a death blow to already very stretched survey operations.” Already, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has closed the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, sparking concern among economists polled by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the FT earlier this month.More than 90 per cent of the respondents to the FT-Chicago Booth poll said they were either “a little” or “very” worried about a decline in the quality of US economic data, in part due to the closure of the FESAC. Lutnick has also suggested that his department produce a measure of GDP that strips out government spending — which goes against international norms. The proposal has triggered apprehension over whether political officials will try to influence economic reporting.“The US has always been the gold standard on data, especially on things like GDP, the labour force, prices,” said Stephen Cecchetti of Brandeis University and former head of the economic and monetary department at the Bank for International Settlements. “It’s been the gold standard because the society and the government supported and believed in measuring things as accurately as possible,” he added. The latest headlinesSome content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.What we’re hearingWhen Bethany of Bogalusa, Louisiana, welcomes into the world her third child — due next week — she plans to rely on Medicaid for the cost of delivery. The government health insurance for people on low incomes has become essential to her family. So she’s been surprised about talk around potential cuts to the programme, which serves one in five Americans. “It never came up in the [presidential] campaign . . . I don’t think people saw it coming,” said Bethany, who voted for Trump in November. What was a prominent issue on the president’s campaign, however, were tax cuts. To pay for those reductions, Republicans in Congress passed a budget that includes huge cuts to spending.And in ruby red Louisiana, a relatively poor state with one of the highest proportions of people on Medicaid, there’s a very real fear that people will suffer as a result. Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.“Any cuts would be very impactful,” said Maria Christina Buenaflor, an obstetric gynaecologist at Our Lady of the Angels hospital in Bogalusa. “Upwards of 60 per cent of the women who deliver here are on Medicaid.” EJ Kuiper, chief executive of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, which runs the Bogalusa hospital, told the FT’s Guy Chazan that more than 40 hospitals in Louisiana are at risk of closing if Medicaid funding is reduced.“If anything close to what is being contemplated now would actually pass, these Congressmen and women would go back to districts where hospitals are going to get shuttered,” he says. “So they’d better plan for a future beyond politics.”Over the next few months, Trump will have to find a way to balance the interests of both the fiscal hawks and his billionaire allies who want to radically downsize the federal government, and his working-class Maga base, which has become heavily reliant on government support.ViewpointsRecommended newsletters for youFT Exclusive — Be the first to see exclusive FT scoops, features, analysis and investigations. Sign up hereBreaking News — Be alerted to the latest stories as soon as they’re published. Sign up here More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe best supposition I’ve heard for how The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the Houthi-bombing Signal messaging group was his initials getting him mistaken for Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative. It would be somewhat ironic if Goldberg’s presence resulted from an attempt to loop in the US official responsible for the attack’s supposed goal of easing the world trade system. It’s not in the top five or even 10 bad things about Signalgate, but it’s highly ambitious to label as a trade-facilitating measure some scattered assaults on a militant group whose blocks on Red Sea container shipping since late 2023 have manifestly failed to stop global freight. Likewise, trying to stick a vaguely defined “Europe” with the bill.In the meantime, even before the extraordinarily destructive auto tariffs Trump announced on Wednesday, the US is posing an actual new threat to the world trading system in the form of fees on Chinese ships calling at US ports. It’s an initiative originating with Joe Biden’s administration, whose role in blazing a wrong-headed trail for Donald Trump to follow should be more widely recognised. The fees are designed to revive US shipbuilding but are more likely simply to raise the price of imports to the US and weaken yet more the country’s economy.The Houthi attacks on shipping were, of course, genuinely worrying, the first time for decades that a major sea route has been severely constricted by the action of militants rather than uncoordinated acts of piracy. Global freight rates more than doubled inside a few weeks. Contrary to vice-president JD Vance’s assertion that the closure of Suez affected almost entirely European trade, world container shipping is sufficiently connected that a capacity shortage on one route increases costs everywhere.But, as with many shocks, the global trading system adjusted. Freight rates partially fell back. Container vessels have been redirected round the southern tip of Africa, increasing travel times and costs but not seriously affecting world goods commerce, which has held up well. Shipping companies and their clients have assessed the risks of using the Suez route and adjusted accordingly. No one really thinks the Houthis are going to be cleared out by a few air strikes. The Biden administration failed to stop their control of the Red Sea despite multiple attacks with support from European allies, especially the UK. Saudi Arabia has intermittently pounded them with bombardments since 2015 but has not dislodged them from Yemen.The Houthis have set up a system of extorting payments from ships for passage. The amount of money raised is disputed, but it’s a nice example of the distinction in economic theory between “stationary bandits”, who exact calibrated bribes to maximise income rather than deterring trade altogether, and “roving bandits” who simply loot everything they can. A fixed and predictable bribe paid to a stationary bandit simply becomes a tax, and companies are used to factoring those into their business calculations.Joe Kramek, head of the World Shipping Council, told me: “Our members are assessing the Red Sea situation according to their individual circumstances on a daily basis, but most are still choosing to go around the continent of Africa, because, as we can see, the security situation isn’t stable.” The French shipping group CMA CGM recently announced a limited service through the Suez Canal, but the situation is very far from normal.Global freight rates shot up again last spring and summer, but shipping industry experts say that appears to have been related to companies globally building inventories to insure against future shocks rather than any fresh news out of the Red Sea. They have since fallen back again, and as Kramek points out, around 80 per cent of global shipping takes place under long-term freight contracts, so dramatic shortlived spikes in container rates have a muted impact on costs. World shipping and ports also managed to cope with a surge of trade earlier this year to get deliveries done before any Trump tariffs were imposed.Kramek’s more immediate concern, as he testified at a hearing this week, is the administration’s plan for a fee of up to $1mn on calls at US ports for Chinese shipping lines and shipping companies that have commissioned vessels from Chinese shipyards and up to $1.5mn for ships built in China. For a visit to the US with six port calls, the WSC reckons this could add $6,350 to the cost of a container, more than twice the combined current spot rates for the Rotterdam-New York route. However, the time lag involved in constructing vessels and the possibility of shuffling Chinese vessels on to different routes surely mean the likelihood that port fees will make a material difference to the relative returns of shipbuilding in the US and China is minimal.It will take time and money to revive US shipbuilding, and burdening shipping with extra costs, even if the WSC’s calculations are discounted as coming from a vested interest, will increase upward pressure on US input and consumer prices without contributing much to the cause. It’s a counter-productive quick fix from an administration that reaches for protectionist tools without any thought to their wider consequences. The auto industry is bracing for a much faster and more catastrophic imposition of barriers, and no one needs accidentally to be added to a “trade & tariffs” Signal messaging group to work that [email protected] More

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies are complicating the path ahead for European Central Bank interest rates, Pierre Wunsch, member of the ECB’s Governing Council, told CNBC.
His comments come after Trump announced 25% tariffs on all cars “not made in the United States,” and threatened to place “far larger” tariffs on the European Union and Canada if they were to work together to resist duties from the U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies are making the path ahead for European Central Bank interest rates “more complicated,” according to Pierre Wunsch, member of the ECB’s Governing Council.
“We were going in the right direction. And I was actually quite relaxed,” he told CNBC’s Karen Tso on Thursday on the sidelines of the IIF Europe Summit in Brussels.

“If we forget tariffs …. we were going in the right direction. Then the question was more a question of fine tuning of the pace of cuts and where we land,” Wunsch said. “I was like, you know, inflation might be the boring part of [20]25, and [20]25 is not a boring year. But if you add tariffs to the equation, it’s becoming more complicated,” he said.
Wunsch, who is also the Governor of the National Bank of Belgium, said tariffs would be “bad for growth” and “probably” inflationary, but noted that the exact impact remains uncertain and will depend any potential retaliation and on how exchange rates react to duties.
His comments come a day after Trump announced 25% tariffs on all cars “not made in the United States,” effective as of April 2. In a post on Truth Social, Trump on Thursday also threatened to place “far larger” tariffs on the European Union and Canada if they were to work together to resist duties from the U.S.
These are just the latest developments in Trump’s trade policy turmoil, which has seen a slew of tariffs announced — and at times postponed, amended or abolished, as negotiations and counter measures have also come into play.
April 2 is set to be a key date for a wide range of duties to come into effect, although recent comments from Trump and his administration have signaled that adjustments could be made and the duties could be more lenient than originally indicated.

Interest rate decisions ahead

The ECB will make its next interest rate decision on April 17 soon after the tariffs are scheduled to come into effect. Markets were last pricing in a roughly 79% chance of a 25-basis-point interest rate cut from the ECB next month, according to LSEG data.
By then, Wunsch said the central bank could have a rough idea of the impact of tariffs, which could influence the ECB’s decision making. However, he said he “wouldn’t put too much focus on April,” as trade policy would have a medium-term impact.
The central banker on Thursday left the door open for all possible actions from the ECB regarding interest rates — further cuts, a hike, or a pause.
“I think the likelihood is still limited that we would have to hike, but there might be a case for a pause,” he said.
“If tariffs have an inflationary impact and a negative impact on growth, it’s going to be a difficult equation, and we might have to consider a pause. I’m not pleading for one, but I think it should be part of the discussion,” he said.

Fiscal vs. tariff policy

Policymaker Wunsch on Thursday also flagged that recent shifts around fiscal policy in Europe could dampen the impact of tariffs.
Germany earlier this month adjusted its constitution in what has been described as a fiscal U-turn, making changes to its long standing debt policies to enable higher defense spending and creating a 500 billion euro ($539 billion) infrastructure special fund.
The European Commission meanwhile has also made moves towards a major defense expenditures package, pledging to mobilize as much as 800 billion euros to boost security spending.
While it was still unclear what exactly would come of the EU-wide plans, “what’s going to take place in Germany is … significant,” according to Wunsch.
The country’s measures “could, to some extent, and even maybe to a large extent, over the medium term, compensate for the tariffs in the U.S.,” he said.
If the impacts of tariffs and fiscal expansion balance out, the remaining impact from tariffs could then be around driving inflation higher, Wunsch noted, saying this was a reason to look not just at April but to take a longer term view over the next one or two years.
“The risk might be on the upside on the inflation front,” he said. More

American companies are racing to negotiate price cuts from Chinese suppliers, shift production and increase prices for US consumers as executives grapple with President Donald Trump’s additional 20 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods and prepare themselves for more.Trump campaigned on a promise of 60 per cent duties on Chinese goods, and the White House may impose additional levies on imports from China on April 2, when it unveils “reciprocal tariffs” on countries around the world.It is unclear how high tariffs could go, but US and Chinese companies are looking for workarounds and rethinking their supply chains to lessen reliance on China.“Obtaining cost concessions from our vendors” was top of the list, Jeff Howie, chief financial officer at home furnishings retailer Williams-Sonoma, told investors this month.Howie said the company would continue to shift sourcing out of China, having already reduced Chinese-made goods from 50 per cent of inventory in 2018 to 23 per cent. He said it would also expand production in the US and was “passing on targeted price increases to our customers”.The Pottery Barn owner is one of several US retailers taking action. Costco and Walmart have already demanded price cuts from suppliers, with the latter hauled in by Chinese authorities to explain their thinking.Demands for price cuts, along with moves to shift production elsewhere, underscore how large companies have built greater resilience and flexibility into their supply chains following Trump’s first trade war and the Covid-19 pandemic.US and Chinese companies said the latest tariffs had accelerated a production diversification drive that began during Trump’s first term.“The 2017 round of tariffs certainly created action, and we’re in a different position than we were back then,” Richard McPhail, chief financial officer of home improvement giant Home Depot, told the Financial Times.Home Depot chief Ted Decker added that many of its suppliers had shifted some manufacturing out of China over the past seven years. About a third went to south-east Asia, a third to Mexico and a third to the US, he said.Elegant Home-Tech, a Chinese manufacturer that ships vinyl flooring to the US, including to Home Depot warehouses, began building a factory in Mexico in 2023 after Trump’s first bout of tariffs.The $60mn factory will start shipping flooring to the US this summer, said a manager at the company, asking not to be named. The group hopes it will not be caught in the crossfire of US-Mexico trade tensions.“Everything is uncertain,” said the manager. “This is difficult for manufacturers, for importers and for retailers.”Elegant Home-Tech is in negotiations with its customers over how to share the added tariff burden, which now stands at 50 per cent. This includes 25 per cent from Trump’s first term and the normal 5 per cent rate.“Our profit is very tiny,” said the manager. “It’s impossible for us to afford all the tariff costs. We will likely split the costs. We think the [in-store] price will increase, too.”Chinese pet-food maker Petpal Pet Nutrition Technology told investors its factories in Vietnam and Cambodia “could now fully take over orders from American customers” and were “not affected by tariffs”.Similarly, Chinese battery-powered tools manufacturer Globe said its “Vietnam factory has basically achieved full coverage of exports to the United States”.The problem for companies shifting their production elsewhere is they are not sure who will be hit by tariffs next. Trump has said the only sure-fire way to avoid tariffs is to move production to the US. “Nobody knows what tariffs are going to be put on, where, when or what,” said Jay Schottenstein, chief executive of clothing brand American Eagle. “We don’t know what’s going to be on Vietnam, we don’t know China, we don’t know India. We don’t know Bangladesh.”“We’re not going to be jumping all over the place until we know exactly what the story is,” he told analysts.Still, American Eagle executives said they had already spent months preparing and planned to reduce China sourcing from the current “high teens” percentage to “single digits” by the second half of the year.For retailers, particularly those heavily reliant on Chinese manufacturing, the effects will be more damaging.Discount retailer Five Below, which sources about 60 per cent of its products from China, expects a percentage-point hit to its gross margin for the year despite its best efforts to mitigate the impact.Kristy Chipman, Five Below’s finance chief, told analysts the group was looking to renegotiate prices with suppliers, shift production and raise some in-store prices.“The breadth and magnitude of the recently announced tariffs are significant,” she said. Additional reporting by Nian Liu and Wenjie Ding in Beijing and Thomas Hale in Shanghai More

President Trump said on Wednesday that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on cars and car parts that were imported into the United States, a move that could encourage U.S. auto production over the longer run but is likely to throw global supply chains into disarray and raise prices for Americans who buy an automobile.The tariffs will go into effect on April 3 and apply both to finished cars and trucks that are shipped into the United States and to imported parts that are included in cars assembled at American auto plants. Those tariffs will hit foreign brands as well as American ones, like Ford Motor and General Motors, which assemble some automobiles outside the country, including in Canada or Mexico.Nearly half of all vehicles sold in the United States are imported, as well as nearly 60 percent of the parts in vehicles assembled in the United States. That means the tariffs could push up car prices significantly when inflation has already made cars and trucks more expensive for American consumers.During remarks at the White House, Mr. Trump said the tariffs would encourage auto companies and their suppliers to set up shop in the United States.“Anybody who has plants in the United States, it’s going to be good for,” he said.But the auto industry is global and has been built up around trade agreements that allow factories in different countries to specialize in certain parts or types of cars, with the expectation that they would face little to no tariffs. That has been particularly true for North America, where national auto sectors have been stitched together by trade agreements since the 1960s.Stock markets fell on news that the auto tariffs would be imposed. Shares of major carmakers tumbled further in after-hours trading, after the White House clarified that the tariffs would also cover imported auto parts. General Motors was down nearly 7 percent and Ford and Stellantis were more than 4 percent lower after the markets closed. Tesla’s stock fell 1 percent in extended trading.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

Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be joining an advisory board for bond giant Pimco, CNBC has learned.
The advisory board members’ mission, according to the Pimco website, is to “contribute their insights to the firm on global economic, political and strategic developments and their relevance for financial markets.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaking with CNBC’s Sara Eisen (not shown) at the U.S Treasury Department on Jan. 8, 2024.

Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be joining an advisory board for bond giant Pimco, CNBC has learned.
Joining other prominent officials in the world of economics and finance, Yellen, who also served as Federal Reserve chair, will serve on the board that meets several times a year, according to the report from CNBC’s Leslie Picker.

The advisory board members’ mission, according to the Pimco website, is to “contribute their insights to the firm on global economic, political and strategic developments and their relevance for financial markets.”
Current members include Gordon Brown, the former U.K. prime minister; ex-White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten; Michèle Flournoy, former defense policy advisor under two U.S. presidents; and Raghuram Rajan, an economist and former governor for the Reserve Bank of India.
In addition, former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke also served as a senior advisor at Pimco, and Richard Clarida, who had served as the central bank’s vice chair, is a managing director in the firm’s New York office.
Yellen served as head of Treasury during all four years of the Biden administration, and before that was Fed chair from 2014-18. She was the first woman to hold the respective posts. Prior to taking the Treasury post, she served a stint as a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
Pimco, based in Newport Beach, California, manages about $2 trillion for clients and once ran the largest bond fund in the world. Yellen has a past with the firm, reporting once that she collected a $180,000 speaking fee at the firm in 2019.

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People take pictures of the U.S. Treasury Department building in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 6, 2025.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

The Treasury Department is planning to furlough a “substantial” level of its workforce in conjunction with Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal government, according to a court document.
As part of a complaint in a related case, Trevor Norris, the department’s deputy assistant secretary in human resources, indicated that the layoffs will be coming as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s ongoing moves to cut the federal employee rolls.

In a sworn statement, Norris said Treasury is wrapping up plans to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order backing DOGE’s activity. Treasury currently has more than 100,000 employees.
“These plans will be tailored for each bureau, and in many cases will require separations of substantial numbers of employees through reductions in force (RIFs),” Norris said in an affidavit.
The case involves a complaint by the state of Maryland to get a stay on the layoffs. In recent days, three judges have issued restraining orders putting temporary halts on DOGE’s efforts to hit several departments.
“The Treasury Department is considering a number of measures to increase efficiency, including a rollback of wasteful Biden-era hiring surges, and consolidation of critical support functions to improve both efficiency and quality of service,” a Treasury spokesperson said. “No final decisions have yet been made, and any current reporting to the contrary is false.”
Bloomberg News first reported the planned layoffs.

Get Your Ticket to Pro LIVEJoin us at the New York Stock Exchange!Uncertain markets? Gain an edge with CNBC Pro LIVE, an exclusive, inaugural event at the historic New York Stock Exchange.
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