Trump, Donald J

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

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    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

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    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.

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    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’

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    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

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    E.U. Officials Set to Vote Today on First Retaliatory Tariffs

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    The European Union plans to vote on Wednesday afternoon on its first retaliation measures in response to President Trump’s tariffs, moving closer to placing increased duties on a range of manufactured goods and farm products that would take effect in phases starting next week.The list up for consideration is a slightly trimmed down version of one that was announced in mid-March in response to Mr. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. E.U. officials have spent recent weeks consulting with policymakers and industries from across the 27-nation bloc in an effort to minimize how much the countermeasures would harm Europeans.The final list is expected to exclude bourbon, for instance, after Mr. Trump threatened to place a 200 percent tariff on all European alcohol in response to its inclusion. That would have been a crushing blow for wine producers in France, Italy and Spain.“We are not in a business of going, let’s say, cent for cent, or tit for tat, or dollar for dollar,” Maros Sefcovic, the bloc’s trade commissioner, said this week.Since last month, the United States has introduced tariffs of 25 percent on steel, aluminum and cars, and broad 20 percent on everything else coming from Europe — and those broad-based tariffs took effect on Wednesday. European Union officials have said they would prefer to negotiate to get rid of those higher levies, and have even offered to cut tariffs to zero on cars and other industrial products if the United States does the same.But with serious negotiations slow to materialize, Europe is striking back in a staggered way. The retaliatory tariffs up for a vote on Wednesday would be a first step, in response only to steel and aluminum levies.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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    Trump Maintains 104% China Tariffs as U.S. Officials Signal Openness to Talks

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    President Trump’s next round of punishing tariffs on some of America’s largest trading partners was set to go into effect just after midnight on Wednesday, including stiff new levies that will increase import taxes on Chinese goods by at least 104 percent.Mr. Trump acknowledged on Tuesday that his tariffs had been “somewhat explosive.” But throughout the day he continued to defend his approach, saying that it was encouraging countries with what he calls “unfair” trade practices to offer concessions.“We have a lot of countries coming in to make deals,” he said during remarks at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. At a dinner with Congressional Republicans in Washington later that evening, he said other countries wanted to make a deal with the United States but he was happy just collecting the revenue from tariffs, which he claimed would reach $2 billion a day.“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said, adding that he would be announcing “a major tariff on pharmaceuticals” very shortly.The president and top administration officials signaled on Tuesday that the White House was ready to negotiate deals, saying that 70 governments had approached the United States to try to roll the levies back. Mr. Trump said officials would begin talks with Japan, South Korea and other nations.The president, whose punitive and successive tariffs on China have triggered a potentially economically damaging trade war, also said he was open to talking to Beijing about a deal.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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    Musk Slams Navarro, Trump’s Trade Adviser, Exposing Inner Circle Rift

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    Elon Musk slammed President Trump’s top trade adviser as “dumber than a sack of bricks” on Tuesday, exposing a remarkable rift in the president’s inner circle over the wide-ranging tariffs that have upended the global economy.The feud between Mr. Musk and Peter Navarro, who has been the architect of many of Mr. Trump’s trade plans, has been simmering for days as the administration’s new tariffs have caused huge losses across global financial markets.So far, Mr. Trump has not weighed in on the clash between his top aides, both of whom he claims to hold in high regard. But Mr. Musk’s words — though aimed at Mr. Navarro — were a rare criticism of Mr. Trump’s policies from one of his most influential advisers.Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is estimated to have lost roughly $31 billion since Mr. Trump announced sweeping tariffs on foreign countries on April 2, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.The squabble escalated on Monday when Mr. Navarro said on CNBC that Mr. Musk was not a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because Tesla, Mr. Musk’s electric vehicle company, relied on parts from around the world.Mr. Musk fired back on Tuesday, calling Mr. Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, the social media site he owns. Later in the day, Mr. Musk doubled down, posting that he wanted to “apologize to bricks.”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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    Stock Market Chaos Over Tariffs Could Take Toll on Economy

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    A big hit to portfolios would be felt acutely by higher-income Americans, whose spending has recently been the biggest driver of the economy.This time, maybe the stock market is the economy.Financial markets around the world have plummeted in the days since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs, setting off a global trade war. The S&P 500 declined more than 10 percent in two days last week, and it swung wildly on Monday amid news of further tariffs and rumors of delays. Stock indexes in Asia and Europe have fallen sharply as well.Experts often caution that the stock market can be a misleading measure of the broader economy. Share prices can move for a host of reasons — technological developments, shifts in consumer preferences, changes in tax or interest rate policy.Sometimes, though, the markets carry an economic message — and in recent days, they have been speaking unusually clearly. Investors overwhelmingly believe that Mr. Trump’s tariffs, and retaliation from U.S. trading partners, will lead to higher prices, slower growth and possibly a global recession.Plunging stock prices may not just reflect fears of a recession. They may also help cause one, as consumers pull back spending in response to their portfolios’ evaporating value.A few days of turmoil might not matter much, said Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm, “but if the drop in the stock market persists for a few weeks, a couple months, the economic costs begin to quickly mount.”The direct effects of tariffs will fall hardest on low- and moderate-income consumers, who tend to spend more of their money on food, clothing and other goods subject to duties, and who have less savings to insulate them from higher prices. But market declines will be felt most acutely by higher earners, who own a disproportionate share of stocks and other investments.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