April 2, 2025, 4:48 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University, calls this “an abrupt end” to an era of free and extensive international trade based on a rules-based system built by the United States. “Rather than fixing the rules that many U.S. trading partners admittedly took advantage of to their own benefit, Trump has chosen to blow up the system governing international trade,” he says.
April 2, 2025, 4:46 p.m. ET
Canada and Mexico, which have been targets of Trump’s previous rounds of tariffs and are the United States’ top trading partners, were not mentioned for additional tariffs in the president’s chart or in detailed country-by-country documents handed out to reporters in the Rose Garden.
April 2, 2025, 4:44 p.m. ET
Business reporter
Futures on the S&P 500, which allow investors to trade when exchanges are not officially open, began to tumble after Trump started outlining the tariff rates. The index had ended the day higher, but futures are now down more than 1 percent.
April 2, 2025, 4:42 p.m. ET
Brussels bureau chief
For the E.U., one of America’s most important trading partners, that 20 percent tariff is going to be painful. Over the past week, I had been hearing expectations for anything between 10 and 25 percent from officials and staffers, but this is clearly at the upper end of the range that was expected.
April 2, 2025, 4:41 p.m. ET
Economic policy reporter
Trump is making the case that experts have been wrong about NAFTA, China and his first-term tariffs and that they will be wrong again about his current trade actions.
April 2, 2025, 4:40 p.m. ET
Economics reporter
I’m not sure I can convey just how unusual this speech is as a means of communicating a major policy announcement. Reporters, investors and economists are all squinting at screen shots of the chart Trump was holding up, trying to discern what it means for trade policy.
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April 2, 2025, 4:36 p.m. ET
Reporting from the Rose Garden
“They’ve got some very bad things going on in South Africa,” Trump says as he outlines the reciprocal tariff against that nation. Trump has amplified false claims about the persecution of white Afrikaners in South Africa, and made an exception to his refugee ban to screen Afrikaners for refugee status. Trump took a break from describing his tariffs to criticize the media for its coverage of South Africa.
April 2, 2025, 4:35 p.m. ET
U.S. economy reporter
Trump says to foreign countries, “If you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America.”
April 2, 2025, 4:33 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
Trump says he will also establish a universal baseline tariff of 10 percent that will apply to all countries, in addition to the numbers he’s already announced. That means a country like China will face a 44 percent tariff on top of the 20 percent Trump has already imposed.
April 2, 2025, 4:36 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
That is on top of other tariffs that China will also face, including 25 percent tariffs on autos and 25 percent tariffs on metals.
April 2, 2025, 4:32 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
The president says he will charge the U.K. a 10 percent tariff. Even that is pretty remarkable, since the United States runs a trade surplus with Britain, it’s such a close ally and the country has been trying to negotiate a trade deal with the United States.
April 2, 2025, 4:29 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
Trump says the United States will calculate a tariff rate for other countries based on tariffs and “other forms of cheating.” These tariff rates are quite high. He says China will face a 34 percent tariff, while the European Union will be 20 percent. Japan will be 24 percent and India 26 percent.
April 2, 2025, 4:29 p.m. ET
Economic policy reporter
Many of these tariff rates seem much higher than some economists and policymakers had been expecting.
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April 2, 2025, 4:29 p.m. ET
Reporting from the Rose Garden
Trump is now taking his time to display a chart outlining details of his tariffs. It’s unclear if anyone outside of those in the front rows can actually read the very small lettering.
April 2, 2025, 4:28 p.m. ET
Economic policy reporter
Trump is holding a chart showing reciprocal tariff rates for U.S. trading partners and then saying that he will charge half of that much. There is no explanation for the calculations that he is using to justify the tariffs.
April 2, 2025, 4:28 p.m. ET
Financial markets reporter
The U.S. dollar has continued its slide from earlier the day as Trump speaks in the Rose Garden. An index that measures the dollar against a basket of America’s trading partners’ currencies, has fallen 0.6 percent for the day, on course for its worst day in about a month.
April 2, 2025, 4:27 p.m. ET
Brussels bureau chief
“They rip us off,” Trump says of the European Union, announcing a 20 percent tariff on the 27-nation bloc.
April 2, 2025, 4:26 p.m. ET
Economic policy reporter
Trump calling the trade deficit a “national emergency” that threatens U.S. security, laying out the legal argument that underpins his actions.
April 2, 2025, 4:24 p.m. ET
Tax policy reporter
Trump is once again criticizing the creation of the income tax in the United States in 1913, arguing that it’s a mystery why the nation ever instituted one. American policymakers embraced the income tax for two reasons: to collect more taxes from the rich and to pay for a growing federal government. Tariffs disproportionately burden low-income Americans, who spend more of their earnings on goods that tariffs make more expensive, while income taxes generally collect disproportionately from the rich.
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April 2, 2025, 4:23 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
“We’re going to start being smart, and we’re going to start being very wealthy,” Trump says. He says the United States is going to start taking care of the American worker first.
April 2, 2025, 4:22 p.m. ET
Reporting from Windsor, Ontario
While Canada does charge high tariffs on dairy imports, under the U.S.M.C.A. trade agreement Trump signed during his first term, duty-free quotas were introduced for American dairy products. To date, American dairy farmers have not met those export levels.
April 2, 2025, 4:21 p.m. ET
U.S. economy reporter
Trump says that egg prices have gone down under his watch after an outbreak of avian flu. But economists warn that tariffs of the kind that Trump is pursuing are likely to lead to much higher prices for consumers. The big question is whether that will translate to persistently higher inflation.
April 2, 2025, 4:21 p.m. ET
International trade reporter
Trump is cherry picking a lot of high tariffs that foreign countries charge on American products. But the U.S. has high tariffs on certain products too, like sugar, footwear, apparel and peanuts, a legacy of efforts to protect those industries. The United States charges 350 percent tariffs on tobacco from many countries, 260 percent tariffs on Irish butter substitutes and 197 percent tariffs on Chinese stainless steel kitchenware, for example.
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