<!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>The other was Canada, which last month placed tariffs on a variety of U.S. goods. The European Union, while signalling that it would prefer to negotiate, is said to be working to finalize a list of U.S. goods that it would target.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Other economies — even large ones […] More
Peter Navarro, a senior White House trade adviser, on Monday defended the sweeping tariffs President Trump has imposed on foreign nations and indicated that other countries’ offers to drop their own tariffs on American products would be insufficient to convince the president to retreat.Mr. Navarro, who has been the architect of many of President Trump’s trade plans, said on CNBC that the United States was facing a national emergency based on chronic trade deficits, and the only fix would be foreign countries removing trade barriers that had hindered the flow of American goods.The European Union offered Monday to drop its tariffs on American cars and industrial goods to zero if the United States did the same. But Mr. Navarro criticized the bloc for its value-added taxes and restrictions on American meat exports, as well as systematically higher tariffs.“You steal from the American people every which way is possible,” Mr. Navarro said. “So, don’t just say we’re going to lower our tariffs.”Mr. Navarro also targeted Vietnam, which has appealed to the president in recent days to have its tariffs reduced. He accused Vietnam of dumping products into U.S. markets, engaging in intellectual property theft and killing industries like shrimp, kitchen cabinets and others.“When they come to us and say, we’ll go to zero tariffs, that means nothing to us, because it’s the non-tariff cheating that matters,” Mr. Navarro said.But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who, with Jamieson Greer, the United States trade representative, was put in charge of negotiations with Japan, signaled in an interview later in the day that Mr. Trump is ready to negotiate. “President Trump, as you know, is better than anyone at giving himself maximum leverage,” he said. Mr. Bessent said he had suggested that foreign officials “keep your cool, do not escalate and come to us with your offers.” He added: “And at a point, President Trump will be ready to negotiate.”In the CNBC interview in the morning, Mr. Navarro said that tax cuts were forthcoming, as well as other benefits for Americans, like deregulation, lower energy prices, lower interest rates and the restructuring of manufacturing.“We’re going to get to a place where America makes stuff again, real wages are going to be up, profits are going to be up,” he said, adding, “the market’s going to find a bottom.” Stock markets closed slightly lower Monday, following two days of punishing losses last week.He was also asked about Elon Musk’s very public criticism of tariffs and of Mr. Navarro specifically over the weekend. Responding to a social-media post praising Mr. Navarro, Mr. Musk on Saturday mocked Mr. Navarro’s Ivy League degree as useless, and then said Mr. Navarro had not “built” anything.On Monday, Mr. Navarro said that Mr. Musk was “not a car manufacturer” but “a car assembler,” mentioning that Tesla’s plant in Texas imported batteries, electronics, tires and other parts. “He wants the cheap foreign parts, and we understand that,” he said. More
President Trump said on Monday that he does not plan to pause a slate of expansive tariffs set to take effect later this week, as he threatened to subject Chinese imports to a staggering 104 percent tax in a bid to ward off retaliation by Beijing and other powers.Mr. Trump issued his warning on a day when the White House once again found itself on the defensive for its spiraling global trade war. But the president insisted he remained unbowed by the widening range of governments pleading for relief and the markets convulsing anew over the chaos and confusion.“We’re not looking at that,” Mr. Trump said, when asked about a possible pause on his tariffs. “We’re going to have one shot at this and no other president is going to do what I’m doing.”Mr. Trump began the day by drawing new battle lines over his so-called reciprocal tariffs, which he plans to impose on certain countries after midnight on Wednesday. The taxes, which can reach as high as 46 percent for some nations, will snap into effect just days after the president imposed a minimum 10 percent levy on nearly every U.S. trading partner.Mr. Trump specifically targeted China, which announced last week it would match the United States by imposing a retaliatory 34 percent tax on imports from America. In a post on Truth Social, the president demanded that Beijing rescind its retribution or face an additional 50 percent U.S. tariff beginning April 9. He also threatened to halt any further negotiations.The escalation could bring the U.S. tariff on Chinese goods to 104 percent, though for some products, the rate is likely to be much higher because of levies that date back to Mr. Trump’s first term. Taken together, it could prove costly for importers bringing in clothing, cellphones, chemicals and machinery from China. American consumers last year bought $440 billion of goods from China, making it the second-largest source of U.S. imports after Mexico.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
President Trump’s global tariffs have sent stock markets worldwide into a tailspin, and the S&P 500 on Monday briefly entered bear market territory for the first time since 2022.Mr. Trump has seemed unmoved by the decline. He signaled on Monday that he had no plans to back off on tariffs, insisting that they would bring in “billions of dollars” in revenue and that other countries had been “abusing” the United States with their trade policies.Here is what to know about a bear market.What is a bear market?A bear market is a Wall Street term for a sustained market downturn, when a stock index closes 20 percent from its last peak.The 20 percent threshold signals investor pessimism about the future of the economy.Are we in a bear market now?The S&P 500, the benchmark U.S. stock index, opened lower on Monday. The index was already down 17.4 percent from its last high, on Feb. 19, and if it closes Monday’s trading with a loss of at least 3.1 percent, that would tip it into a bear market. More
The news seemed big: That the Trump administration was considering a 90-day pause to his expansive tariffs.The problem was, it wasn’t true.But in a sign of the precarious nature of the markets right now, an unsubstantiated online report spiked shares sharply, albeit briefly, and continued to climb after CNBC and Reuters relayed the claim. The White House quickly responded saying that the report was “FAKE NEWS,” and CNBC and Reuters issued statements correcting the record.Stocks fell back down after those corrections. Still, the fallout continued to reverberate on Monday, and became a cautionary tale of the risk of using information drawn from the fast-moving echo chamber of social media without first confirming the news independently.Asked earlier in the day about the possibility of a pause on imposing the expansive tariffs announced by President Trump last week, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said on Fox News: “I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide.”Walter Bloomberg, an influential X account that is unaffiliated with Bloomberg News, amplified a post on social media claiming Mr. Hassett had said Mr. Trump was considering a 90-day pause in tariffs.Minutes after the Walter Bloomberg account’s post, Carl Quintanilla, a CNBC anchor, read a headline on air echoing the reports about Hassett. “I think we can go with this headline,” Mr. Quintanilla said, without attributing the news. A person with knowledge of the editorial process at the network said Mr. Quintanilla had read a CNBC headline that was circulated prematurely by mistake.After that, Reuters flashed a headline, citing CNBC. The Walter Bloomberg account later deleted the post. In a direct message on X, the account said to The New York Times that the post had originated minutes earlier from another X account. “Given the market movement — plus 4.5 percent — I deemed the headline reliable and posted it at 10:13,” the Walter Bloomberg account said in the direct message. “A few minutes later, Reuters picked up the story, citing CNBC.”CNBC issued a correction soon after mentioning the potential pause, saying its “aired unconfirmed information in a banner,” adding that its reporters “quickly made a correction on air.” Reuters also issued a correction, saying its report relied on a headline from CNBC. “Reuters has withdrawn the incorrect report and regrets its error,” it said in a statement. More
U.S. oil prices fell sharply, briefly dipping below $60 a barrel on Sunday — their lowest level in almost four years — as the economic fallout from President Trump’s latest round of tariffs reverberated around the world.The price of crude oil is down more than 15 percent since last Wednesday, just before Mr. Trump revealed his plans to impose stiff new tariffs on imports from most countries. That prices have fallen so far so quickly reflects deepening concern that high tariffs could slow economic growth and perhaps even cause recessions in the United States and the countries it trades with.The cost of U.S. benchmark crude continued to fall on Monday, down more than 2 percent. Cheaper oil is generally good for consumers and businesses that use gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. In fact, Mr. Trump and his aides have pushed for lower energy prices to curb inflation.But if prices remain around these levels or fall further, U.S. oil and gas companies are likely to slow drilling, cut spending and lay off workers. That would be especially painful to oil-rich states like Texas and New Mexico.Another big reason that oil prices have weakened is that the OPEC cartel and its allies announced last week that they would accelerate plans to increase production. That will increase supply of oil at a time when many analysts expect demand to weaken.U.S. energy companies are also getting squeezed by higher costs for essential materials like steel tubing, which is subject to a 25 percent tariff Mr. Trump announced in February.Smaller oil companies — a key constituency for Mr. Trump — are likely to be among the first to slow down, as they tend to be more nimble and have fewer financial resources. Natural gas prices have been more resilient, providing some cushion for producers.Last week, the share price of an exchange-traded fund composed of U.S. oil and gas stocks fell by 20 percent in the two days after Mr. Trump’s tariff announcement. More
Free trade has been so beneficial to so many countries that the world may find a way to live without its biggest player.President Trump’s self-proclaimed “liberation day,” in which he announced across-the-board tariffs on the United States’ trading partners, carries an echo of another moment when an advanced Western economy threw up walls around itself.Like Brexit, Britain’s fateful vote nearly nine years ago to leave the European Union, Mr. Trump’s tariffs struck a hammer blow at the established order. Pulling the United States out of the global economy is not unlike Britain withdrawing from a Europe-wide trading bloc, and in the view of Brexiteers, a comparable act of liberation.The shock of Mr. Trump’s move is reverberating even more widely, given the larger size of the American economy and its place at the fulcrum of global commerce. Yet as with Brexit, its ultimate impact is unsettled: Mr. Trump could yet reverse himself, chastened by plummeting markets or mollified by one-off deals.More important, economists say, the rise of free trade may be irreversible, its benefits so powerful that the rest of the world finds a way to keep the system going, even without its central player. For all of the setbacks to trade liberalization, and the grievances expressed in Mr. Trump’s actions, the barriers have kept falling.The European Union, optimists point out, did not unravel after Britain’s departure. These days, the political talk in London is about ways in which Britain can draw closer to its European neighbors. Still, that sense of possibility has come only after years of turbulence. Economists expect similar chaos to buffet the global trading system as a result of Mr. Trump’s theatrical exit.“It will not be the end of free trade, but it is certainly a retreat from unfettered free trade, which is the way the world seemed to be going,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. “Logically, this would be a time when the rest of the world bands together to promote free trade among themselves,” he said. “The reality is, it’s going to be every country for itself.”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
President Trump vowed to aid entrepreneurs by reducing taxes and slicing red tape. But some owners say other policies have put them at a disadvantage.It was a bad week for Ben Coryell, who runs a wilderness guiding company in Golden, Colo.He got several calls from customers who wanted to cancel their climbing courses and mountaineering expeditions over the summer, often citing second thoughts about big purchases as the Trump administration has thrown the economy into turmoil with eye-watering tariffs.At the same time, Mr. Coryell is wondering how long his business, Golden Mountain Guides, can continue to offer those trips, as personnel cuts at the National Park Service have held up the processing of the permits he needs to operate along high-demand routes. And with those cuts leaving fewer rangers on patrol, he fears that unlicensed operators could run amok.So far he hasn’t laid anyone off, but it seems increasingly likely that he may have to.“It’s really starting to feel like a lot of the operations we’ve depended on might have to be bumped for the next number of years until we can find a healthy status quo,” he said.Helmets on display at Golden Mountain Guides.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesThousands of entrepreneurs are finding themselves in similar positions as they confront the blizzard of changes from Washington over the last two and a half months. Funding freezes, staffing cuts to federal agencies and an immigration crackdown — along with, of course, tariffs — are throwing many into turmoil, with little certainty about how to proceed.“It’s feeling like a tornado to small-business owners,” said Natalie Madeira Cofield, chief executive of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, which supports initiatives to help companies with fewer than 10 employees. “This is an unprecedented moment.”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
