Finance

China on Wednesday set its GDP growth target for 2025 at “around 5%” as it starts its annual parliamentary meeting amid escalating trade tensions with the U.S, according to a copy of the government work report seen by CNBC.
Beijing raised its budget deficit target to “around 4%” of GDP from 3% last year.
The 4% deficit would mark the highest on record going back to 2010, according to data accessed via Wind Information. The prior high was 3.6% in 2020, the data showed.

An aerial view of a new city district in southern China’s Nanning city on Feb. 28, 2025.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

China on Wednesday set its GDP growth target for 2025 at “around 5%” and laid out stimulus measures to boost its economy amid escalating trade tensions with the U.S.
Beijing raised its budget deficit target to “around 4%” of GDP from 3% last year, according to a copy of the government work report seen by CNBC, as the country’s top legislative body kickstarts its annual meeting.

The 4% deficit would mark the highest on record going back to 2010, according to data accessed via Wind Information. The prior high was 3.6% in 2020, the data showed.
The government report laid out a plan to issue 1.3 trillion yuan ultra-long-term special treasury bonds in 2025, 300 billion yuan more than last year. Another 500 billion yuan worth of special treasury bonds will be issued to support large state-owned commercial banks.
The report reiterated Beijing’s plan to adopt a “more proactive” fiscal policy and “appropriately accommodative” monetary policy.
In an implicit acknowledgement of sluggish domestic demand, Beijing also revised down its annual consumer price inflation target to “around 2%” — the lowest in more than two decades — from 3% or higher in prior years, according to the Asia Society Policy Institute.
The new inflation goal would act more as a ceiling than a target to be realized. Consumer prices climbed just 0.2% in 2024 and 2023, while producer prices have declined for over two years.

The country’s annual parliamentary gathering, known as the “Two Sessions,” started Tuesday with the opening ceremony of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — a top advisory body.
The National People’s Congress kicked off its meeting Wednesday and is expected to wrap up its annual session on March 11. The foreign minister and heads of several economic departments are due to hold press conferences in the interim.

The opening of China’s National People’s Congress coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned speech at a joint session of Congress, where Trump could share his agenda and goals for the year.
On the issue of Taiwan, Beijing stressed it would “resolutely oppose separatist activities” aimed at the democratically governed island’s independence, while promoting a “peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.”

Tit-for-tat tariffs

This year’s parliamentary meetings come as Trump has imposed fresh tariffs on Chinese goods — an additional 20% in duties in just about a month.
Beijing on Tuesday responded with additional tariffs of up to 15% on some U.S. goods from March 10, and restrictions on exports to 15 U.S. companies. China also added 10 U.S. firms to an unreliable entities list that could limit their ability to do business in the Asian country. Many of the named U.S. businesses work in aerospace, defense or with drones.
“We hope to work with the U. S. side to address each other’s concerns through dialogue and consultation on the basis of mutual respect, equality, reciprocity, and mutual betterment,” Lou Qinjian, spokesperson for the third session of the 14th National People’s Congress, told reporters Tuesday morning.
“At the same time, we never accept any act of pressuring or threatening, and will firmly defend our sovereignty, security, and development interests,” he said in Mandarin, via an official translation.

Stimulus and tech

The increased U.S. duties will weigh on China’s exports, a rare bright spot in an economy struggling with lackluster domestic demand.
While the world’s second-largest economy grew by 5% in 2024, retail sales growth fell sharply to 3.4% from 7.1% in 2023. The real estate drag persisted, with investments in the sector dropping by 10.6% last year, from the a year earlier.
Investors have closely watched Beijing’s efforts to address the country’s economic slowdown after an unexpected, high-level pledge of support in September prompted a stock rally. Market gains picked up again after Chinese President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting last month with entrepreneurs including Alibaba’s Jack Ma and artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng.
“There is no denying that AI technologies are accompanied by some unknown risks and challenges and will bring new tasks in areas like security, social governance, morality, and ethics. … It will inevitably have an impact on production,” Lou said.
“China … is opposed to over-stretching the concept of national security or politicizing economic and technological issues,” he said.
Investors will also be closely watching the parliamentary meetings for further comments on artificial intelligence and China’s efforts to provide regulatory certainty for the private sector.
— CNBC’s Bernice Ooi contributed to this report. More

The new deficit plan, which is up from 3% last year, comes amid an escalating trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
An increase to 4% of GDP had been widely expected. It marks the highest fiscal deficit on record going back to 2010, according to data accessed via Wind Information. The prior high was 3.6% in 2020, the data showed.

Pictured here is a residential complex under construction in Hangzhou, China, on Dec. 16, 2024.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

BEIJING — China on Wednesday announced plans to raise its fiscal deficit to “around 4%” of gross domestic product, a rare increase that marks a meaningful shift in policy.
The target was confirmed in an official government report for review in parliament on Wednesday.

The new deficit plan, which is up from 3% last year, comes amid an escalating trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
An increase to 4% of GDP had been widely expected. It marks the highest fiscal deficit on record going back to 2010, according to data accessed via Wind Information. The prior high was 3.6% in 2020, the data showed.
In October, Chinese Minister of Finance Lan Fo’an said the space for a deficit increase is “rather large.”
China in November had announced a support package of 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) over five years — primarily to tackle local government debt problems.
The country’s real estate market slump has cut into a significant source of revenue for local governments, many of which struggled financially even before needing to spend on Covid-19 measures. Meanwhile, lackluster consumption and slow growth overall have multiplied calls for more fiscal stimulus.
China was also expected to triple the quota for special sovereign bond sales to 3 trillion yuan ($410 billion) this year, from 1 trillion yuan in 2024, and increase the year’s quota for special local government bond issuance to 4.5 trillion yuan from 3.9 trillion yuan previously, according to estimates from Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu. More

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday dismissed its lawsuit against the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three U.S. banks that dominate transactions on it.
The CFPB sued Early Warning Services, which runs the peer-to-peer payments network, as well as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo in December, alleging that the firms failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement.
The CFPB “dismisses this action against Defendants Early Warning Services, LLC, Bank of America, N.A., JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., with prejudice,” the regulator said.

FILE PHOTO: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Russell Vought testifies before House Budget Committee on 2020 Budget on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2019. 
Yuri Gripas | Reuters

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday dismissed its lawsuit against the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three U.S. banks that dominate transactions on it.
The CFPB sued Early Warning Services, which runs the peer-to-peer payments network, as well as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo in December, alleging that the firms failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement.

The CFPB “dismisses this action against Defendants Early Warning Services, LLC, Bank of America, N.A., JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., with prejudice,” the regulator said in its filing.
Since acting Director Russell Vought has taken over the CFPB, the agency has dropped at least a half dozen cases brought by his predecessor, Rohit Chopra. The agency is now embroiled in a legal battle after a union representing CFPB employees sued to halt mass firings and the purging of data that would’ve happened under Vought and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The CFPB said customers of the three banks have lost more than $870 million since the launch of Zelle in 2017. The service was started to provide bank customers an alternative to peer-to-peer platforms including PayPal. Last year Zelle crossed $1 trillion in total volume, which it said was the most ever for a peer-to-peer platform.
Since the recent cases were dismissed with prejudice, the CFPB has agreed to never bring these claims again, shutting off the possibility of clawing back funds for consumer relief, former head of enforcement Eric Halperin told CNBC last week.
A spokeswoman for the Zelle brand said they welcomed the dismissal and reiterated an assertion that the CFPB lawsuit was “legally and factually flawed.”

A JPMorgan spokeswoman said that while “banks play a crucial role in scam prevention and consumer education…. this is a national security problem that requires a collective effort across the public and private sectors.”
“Banks have consistently followed the law in offering services through Zelle,” Lindsey Johnson, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, said in a statement after the dismissal. “In a time when fraud and scam activity is surging … we look forward to moving past finger-pointing and political grandstanding and instead working constructively with policymakers to counter the root causes of these threats.”

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President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico on Tuesday. He put a lower 10% tariff on Canadian energy, and another 10% levy on China.
Canada and Mexico are the largest trading partners of the United States.
Businesses are expected to raise prices for consumer goods as a result. Those effects are likely to be felt broadly across the economy.

Port Newark Container Terminal on March 3, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. 
Kena Betancur/View Press | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Tariffs on Canada and Mexico took effect Tuesday — and they’re bound to raise prices for consumers, sometimes in unexpected ways, according to economists.
Tariffs are a tax on foreign imports, paid by the United States entity importing a particular good.

President Trump on Tuesday imposed a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, the two largest trading partners of the United States. Trump set a lower 10% tariff on Canadian energy.
Businesses typically pass along some of the additional cost of tariffs to consumers, economists said.
Certain products like fruits and vegetables from Mexico and oil from Canada — which are among their major exports to the U.S. — will get more expensive as a result, economists said.
But there are also far-reaching impacts across supply chains that aren’t as clear-cut, they said.
“Tariffs create ripple effects that move through complex supply chains in ways that aren’t always obvious,” Travis Tokar, professor of supply chain management at Texas Christian University, wrote in an e-mail.

Such dynamics make it challenging to predict precise product and price impacts, Tokar said.
For example, take a fast-food chicken sandwich. While none of its ingredients may come directly from Canada or Mexico, the aluminum foil used in its packaging might — driving up costs that could be passed on to consumers, Tokar said.
Nearly everything consumers buy is transported by trucks fueled by refined oil products — meaning the impact of tariffs on Canadian crude oil “could be much broader than it appears at first glance,” Tokar said.
The U.S. sources almost half of its foreign fuel from Canada, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“Costs eventually have to go through the supply chain” to the end consumer, said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

How much tariffs may cost the typical person

The U.S. traded $1.6 trillion of goods with Canada and Mexico in 2024, accounting for more than 30% of total U.S. trade, according to Census Bureau data as of December.
Tariffs on Canada and Mexico are expected to cost the average American household $930 in 2026, according to a January analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
More from Personal Finance:Who benefits from Trump tax cuts?Americans are suffering from ‘sticker shock’How the U.S. has used tariffs throughout history
The levies would cost the typical household $1,200 a year after also accounting for tariffs on China, according to a PIIE analysis. (The analysis only considered a 10% tariff on Chinese imports that Trump imposed in February; he put another 10% tariff in place Tuesday.)
That PIIE assessment of consumer impact is “conservative,” said Lovely.
For one, it doesn’t factor how domestic manufacturers would likely respond to less foreign competition, she said.
“These tariffs will increase the price of imported goods,” and domestic producers would likely raise their prices to “match” those of their foreign counterparts, said Alexander Field, an economics professor at Santa Clara University.

‘Hugely disruptive’ for auto sector

Consumer impact will also depend on the particular industry and company.
Economists expect the automobile industry to be the most impacted sector, since automakers have extensive supply chains built up across North America.
A new car that’s assembled in Alabama, for example, may seem unaffected by the tariffs — but many of those car parts may come from Mexico or Canada, Tokar said.
Major automakers like Ford, General Motors and Stellantis may “face higher production costs due to the reliance on cross-border supply chains for parts and vehicles,” according to a Bank of America Global Research note on Monday.
All told, Canada and Mexico tariffs could add almost $6,000 to the cost of a car, according to an estimate from investment bank Benchmark Co. in February. That dynamic is expected to drive up car insurance premiums.
“This will be hugely disruptive for the auto industry,” said Douglas Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and author of “Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy.”

Fresh produce could see swift price hikes

President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on Feb. 25, 2025. Trump directed the Commerce Department to open an investigation into potential tariffs for copper imports. 
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target, said Mexico tariffs could force the company to raise prices on fruits and vegetables — including strawberries, avocados and bananas — within a few days.
Food prices overall would rise nearly 2% in the short term, according to a Yale budget Lab analysis of Canada, Mexico and China tariffs. Fresh produce prices would rise almost 3%.
Construction materials are also a big export from Canada — including more than 40% of U.S. imports of wood products, according to PIIE.
“If you’re doing a renovation this summer, you’re kind of out of luck,” Lovely said.
Big corporations may be in a position to absorb some of the tariff cost, instead of passing on everything to consumers, Lovely said. But agricultural producers may not be in a position to do that, for example, since there are often “very low margins across the supply chain,” she said.
Even businesses that absorb some of the cost — to avoid immediate sticker shock for consumers — means they have less profit to invest in new equipment, hire workers or develop new products, which creates an “economic drag that is less visible but still significant,” Tokar said.

Retaliation also has an effect

Consumers would also be impacted by foreign retaliation on U.S. trade — something to which officials in Mexico, Canada and China have already committed.
“You don’t put these kinds of tariffs in place without expecting retaliation, and that’s happening right now,” said Field.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday announced a 25% levy on C$30 billion worth of U.S. imports, effective immediately. Tariffs on another C$125 billion in U.S. goods will take effect in 21 days, he said.

Trump responded to the measures Tuesday by vowing additional tariffs on Canada.
Ontario will impose a 25% tax on electricity it exports to 1.5 million homes in Minnesota, Michigan and New York in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs, Doug Ford, the province’s leader, told The Wall Street Journal.
China also announced retaliatory tariffs of up to 15% targeted at U.S. agriculture. U.S. corn will face a 15% levy, while soybeans will be hit with a 10% duty, for example. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum plans to announce retaliatory measures on Sunday. More

President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico on Tuesday.
Because Trump leveraged emergency powers to set the policy, turning the tariffs on occurs quickly, like flipping on a light switch, trade experts said.
But the White House indefinitely exempted “de minimis” imports, or those valued at $800 or less.
It could take months before tariffs take effect on those goods, experts said.

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks with members of the media on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., Feb. 28, 2025. 
Nathan Howard | Reuters

U.S. importers and their customers are about to experience the full force of President Donald Trump’s unprecedented use of emergency economic powers.
At midnight Tuesday, 25% tariffs on imports from America’s top two trading partners, Canada and Mexico, went into effect, as did an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports. Tariffs on Canadian energy, at a rate of 10%, also began at midnight Tuesday.

It’s difficult to overstate how far-reaching the impact of these tariffs will be, or how quickly they will be felt.
U.S. trade with Mexico, Canada and China in 2024 accounted for around 40% of America’s total commerce in goods around the world.
And unlike traditional trade policy, these tariffs are designed to deliver a financial sting right away, trade experts told CNBC.
“From a technical standpoint, the imposition of the tariffs is basically a light switch. They’re on or they’re off,” said Daniel Anthony, the president of Trade Partnership Worldwide, a policy research firm.
Literally overnight, the cost of importing, for example, $100,000 worth of limes from Mexico increased by $25,000 on Tuesday. This is money that the importer will need to pay directly to U.S. Customs and Border Protection when the limes cross the border.

Consumers will bear the brunt of the tariffs in higher prices, experts say. The Tax Policy Center estimates that Trump’s Mexico and Canada tariffs alone will cost the average household an additional $930 a year by 2026.
Target CEO Brian Cornell told investors Tuesday that shoppers could see produce prices rise within days, the result of tariffs on Mexican fruits and vegetables.
Even if a glitch prevented tariffs from being collected starting at exactly 12:01 a.m. E.T. on Tuesday, they would still be tallied, and importers could expect to receive a tax bill retroactively, said Nicole Bivens Collinson, a Washington trade lobbyist and managing principal at Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg.
“It’s like when you get an Uber bill and you forgot to tip, and add it on later,” she said.

Along with the two new North American tariff rates, Trump also signed an order Monday doubling his earlier 10% tariff on imports from China, for a total 20% additional tariff rate on the nation.
Taken together, Canada, China and Mexico accounted for $2.2 trillion worth of U.S. overseas trade in 2024, according to federal census data. About $840 billion of that came from trade with Mexico, $762 billion from Canadian imports and exports, and $582 billion from China.

Extraordinary power

Containers at the Port of Vancouver in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Feb. 28, 2025.
Ethan Cairns/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The imposition of the massive new tariffs is a sharp reminder of how much power Trump wields over global commerce.
But it also hints at the limitations of this power.
Part of the reason Trump could impose the tariffs so quickly is because the White House is invoking a sweeping national security law to justify the new levies.
Until now, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA, had been used mainly to impose emergency sanctions on foreign dictators or suspected terrorist groups.
But the Trump administration argues that the illicit global fentanyl trade and immigrants at the Mexican border both qualify as “unusual and extraordinary” foreign threats to American national security, justifying Trump’s use of emergency powers under IEEPA.
Trump is using the law in a broader way than any president has before, Trade Partnership Worldwide’s Anthony said.
By pushing the boundaries of presidential authority, Trump is inviting legal challenges, Anthony said.

And implementing such broad orders on an emergency basis is not without its complications.
In the case of so-called de minimis shipments, the Trump administration imposed new levies on millions of shipments entering the United States before the federal government had the means to actually collect the fees.

The de minimis mess

Oscar Wong | Moment | Getty Images

“De minimis” imports are international shipments valued at $800 or less. Historically, these low-value, person-to-person imports have been exempt from U.S. tariffs.
Several of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies take advantage of the de minimis loophole by shipping their products directly to consumers from overseas.
Fast fashion sites, such as Temu and Shein, ship goods directly from China to American consumers. They have helped fuel an explosion in U.S.-bound de minimis shipments in recent years.
But collecting tariffs on de minimis goods is harder than it looks.
“There’s a whole infrastructure system set up for normal shipments that come in to the country,” said Collinson, who previously served as a U.S. trade negotiator. But this system doesn’t exist for de minimis imports, she added.
In 2024 alone, the U.S. accepted more than 1.3 billion overseas shipments that qualified for de minimis tariff exemptions, according to federal data.
To process that many new shipments, the federal government will need to hire more customs agents, experts said.
Nonetheless, in early February Trump announced that the United States would begin collecting tariffs on low-value shipments from overseas.
Trump’s order gave the U.S. Postal Service mere days to implement a system to begin collecting tariffs on millions of small packages every day.
It also sowed chaos throughout the international postal system, culminating on Feb. 4 with an announcement that USPS had suspended all parcel delivery services from China and Hong Kong “until further notice.”
A day later, the postal service reversed course and resumed processing the de minimis parcels. But it did not collect any tariffs on them.
Soon after, the Trump administration issued an amendment to the China order, formally delaying any effort to collect tariffs on de minimis imports until “adequate systems are in place to fully and expediently process and collect tariff revenue” on them.
The U.S. Postal Service didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, the White House put similar de minimis waivers in place for Canada and Mexico, ahead of imposing the new 25% tariffs.
It’s unclear when a de minimis tariff collection system might be up and running.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman told CNBC, “The dynamic nature of our mission, along with evolving threats and challenges, requires CBP to remain flexible and adapt quickly while ensuring seamless operations and mission resilience.”
But Anthony noted that the delay for China was “open ended.”
“Part of the challenge is [federal] personnel and bandwidth,” he said. Customs and Border Protection may not have the staff or resources available to handle the new volume of shipments and packages, he said.
Officials must also determine how the levy will be assessed and paid, and how customs officials will process tens of millions of new data points furnished by shippers for each individual package, the experts said.
“Anyone can develop a good policy, but whether that policy can actually be effectuated is critical,” Collinson said. More

China announced Tuesday it would impose additional tariffs of up to 15% on some U.S. goods from March 10 and restrict exports to 15 U.S. companies.
The retaliatory measures from China’s Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Commerce came just as additional U.S. tariffs took effect on Chinese goods.
After the first round of new U.S. tariffs in February, China’s retaliatory measures included raising duties on certain U.S. energy imports and putting two U.S. companies on an unreliable entities list that could restrict their ability to do business in the Asian country.

Chinese and U.S. flags flutter near The Bund, before U.S. trade delegation meet their Chinese counterparts for talks in Shanghai, China July 30, 2019.
Aly Song | Reuters

BEIJING — China announced Tuesday it would impose additional tariffs of up to 15% on some U.S. goods from March 10 and restrict exports to 15 U.S. companies.
The retaliatory measures from China’s Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Commerce came just as additional U.S. tariffs took effect on Chinese goods.

The additional Chinese tariffs largely cover U.S. agricultural goods, including corn and soybeans, which will be subject to new duties of 15% and 10%, respectively, according to the finance ministry’s website.
Companies affected by the export controls include Leidos and General Dynamics Land Systems, according to the commerce ministry.
China’s relationship with the U.S. is bound to see disagreements, but China will not accept pressuring or threatening, Lou Qinjian, spokesperson for the third session of the 14th National People’s Congress, told reporters Tuesday morning.
The congress is set to kick off an annual meeting on Wednesday.
The White House has confirmed that new duties of 10% on Chinese goods are set to take effect Tuesday, bringing the total amount of new tariffs imposed in just about a month to 20%.

In a statement published earlier in the day, China’s Ministry of Commerce said Beijing “firmly rejects” additional U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and will take countermeasures.
The duties will “hurt” U.S.-China trade relations and China urges the U.S. to withdraw them, the ministry said in Chinese, translated by CNBC. Beijing has previously warned of countermeasures, but had yet to detail any as of Tuesday morning.

Tariff ‘displeasure’

“Trade wars carry the risk of retaliation and escalation — and certainly in the case of China, and in the case potentially of Canada and Mexico, which also will be facing tariffs today … we would expect some response to come,” Frederique Carrier, head of investment strategy at RBC Wealth Management, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Tuesday.
“A response perhaps that is not tit-for-tat exactly but a targeted response to show the displeasure that these countries are experiencing at getting tariffs,” Carrier said.
After the first round of new U.S. tariffs in February, China’s retaliatory measures included raising duties on certain U.S. energy imports and putting two U.S. companies on an unreliable entities list that could restrict their ability to do business in the Asian country.
The average effective U.S. tariff rate on Chinese goods is thus set to hit 33%, up from around 13% before U.S. President Donald Trump began his latest term in January, according to estimates from Nomura’s Chief China economist Ting Lu.
China’s state-backed Global Times reported Monday, citing a source, that Beijing was considering retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural products.
U.S. exports of agricultural products such as soybeans to China account for the largest share of U.S. goods exported to China at 1.2%, or $22.3 billion, as of 2023, according to Allianz Research analysis.
Oil and gas ranked second by share at 1%, or $19.3 billion, the research showed. Pharmaceuticals ranked third at 0.8% or $15.6 billion. More

HE HAS ACTUALLY gone and done it. President Donald Trump had long threatened to impose hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico, America’s two biggest trading partners. Last month, when they were first due to take effect, he offered both countries a last-minute reprieve. Now he is in no mood to play nice. As we published this, new tariffs were set to come into effect at 12:01am EST on March 4th. America will hit imports from its two neighbours with levies of 25%. For good measure, Mr Trump will also add another 10% tariff on Chinese goods, on top of the 10% charge he implemented last month, which itself added to tariffs imposed in his first term. More

HE HAS ACTUALLY gone and done it. President Donald Trump had long threatened to impose hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico, America’s two biggest trading partners. Last month, when they were first due to take effect, he offered both countries a last-minute reprieve. This time, he was in no mood to play nice. New tariffs came into effect at 12:01am EST on March 4th, when America hit imports from its two neighbours with levies of 25%. For good measure, Mr Trump added another 10% tariff on Chinese goods, on top of the 10% charge he implemented last month, which itself added to tariffs imposed in his first term. More