French industry minister Marc Ferracci said on Wednesday that Europe would respond to President Trump’s tariffs in a proportionate manner but would not escalate tensions under any circumstances.
“Europe has always been on the side of negotiation and calming things down, because trade wars, you know, only produce losers,” Ferracci told French broadcaster RMC radio.
Japan’s government said today that it had expressed to “various levels” of the Trump administration that it should not unilaterally implement new tariffs against the country.
“We will carefully examine the details of these tariff measures and their potential impact on our nation while also continuing to strongly urge the U.S. to reconsider its actions,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Wednesday, adding that Japan would continue to hold close consultations with the U.S.
Earlier Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters a day earlier that his country would continue to examine their impact of U.S.-levied tariffs on domestic industries and employment.
“We will immediately set up special consultation offices in approximately 1,000 locations throughout Japan as a short-term response,” to the measures, Ishiba said, adding that these offices would aim to address the concerns and anxieties of small and medium-sized businesses.
Much uncertainty remains about whether President Trump’s promise to slap a 10% tariff on Canadian imports will include the natural gas and electricity that flows cross-border into some U.S. states and into households.
Combined with reciprocal tariffs, such duties could spike utility bills in those areas by as much as 20% — especially in the New England region, where many homes are heated by fuel oil — according to projections by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents state administrators of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Consumer advocates say the Trump administration has also made it more difficult for some households to shoulder such an increase by eliminating the staff responsible for managing LIHEAP in its purge of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“For those who are already struggling to cover their bills, the additional costs will be burdensome and many will have to make tough choices between paying for their home energy bill or paying for their medicine, food, and other essentials,” NEADA said in a release last week.
A self-prescribed deadline by a Hong Kong private conglomerate to sell off its two ports along the Panama Canal came to pass on Wednesday, after Communist Party newspapers blasted the plan as undermining Beijing’s interest.
CK Hutchison, owned by tycoon Li Ka-shing, was expected to finalize “definitive documentation” which was to be signed on or before Wednesday, according to a joint Mar. 4 announcement by the firm and the U.S. investment firm BlackRock, which would be taking over from the ports.
But the apparent delay came as Beijing’s market regulator last week announced it will review the port sales “to protect fair market competition and safeguard public interests.” Beijing-controlled newspaper Ta Kung Pao and others also published several articles last month, criticizing the sale.
Trump has called the critical waterway, through which 15,000 ships transit each year, “vital” to national security and wrongfully claimed that China is “operating” the canal.
Mounting pressure resulted in the plans being hatched for the sale of the ports in a deal that would have seen CK Hutchison’s 90% interest in the Panama ports, and its 80% controlling interest in its 43 ports worldwide, except those in mainland China and Hong Kong, sold off to a U.S. consortium for $22.8 billion.
A number of congressional Republicans are publicly voicing concern over the potential for a prolonged trade war and its effect on American farmers as Trump prepares to announce a new wave of tariffs.
House Agriculture Committee chair Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., told NBC News that he has asked the White House to exempt certain goods that are important to the U.S. agricultural industry, such as fertilizer and peat moss.
“I’ve kind of pointed out the things that I’m hoping” will be excluded, he said. “I talk with anybody who will listen to me. … They’ve been really good about input.”
Thompson also said he hopes Congress won’t need to bail out farmers with an emergency aid package, as it did during the first Trump administration. But, he said, “we’ll be prepared to do that” again if needed.
Reporting from BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala.
It has been four months since Henry Barnes, the mayor of Bayou La Batre, a struggling fishing village in southern Alabama, wrote to Trump for help.
A flood of cheap imported shrimp is killing the local seafood market, he wrote, thanks to “low and non-existent tariffs.” He invited Trump, for whom he voted, to come visit Bayou La Batre, known as Alabama’s Seafood Capital.
But thus far he hasn’t heard back. “He’ll eventually get around to us,” said Barnes, a third-generation net-maker. “I mean, we’re just a small town.”
Asked what his recent message to automotive industry CEOs was and whether he had warned them against raising prices, Trump said: “The message is congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money. If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”
Pressed about whether he told CEOs not to raise prices, as The Wall Street Journal reported, Trump added: “No, I never said that. I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars.”
Mexico has promised to retaliate, but President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has held frequent talks with Trump, has not yet imposed any tariffs. Sheinbaum said she wants to maintain “cool heads” as she seeks to avoid a trade war.
Canada imposed a 25% tariff on U.S. steel and aluminum products worth nearly $16 billion. It also hit back with 25% tariffs on U.S. computers, servers and sports equipment.
The European Union has promised to retaliate against U.S. beef, bourbon, peanut butter and denim products, but it delayed those tariffs until mid-April. The bloc’s top trade official said he was holding talks with the United States about avoiding tariffs. European capitals have been pushing to avoid an all-out trade war between the 27-nation union and the United States.
As the threat of tariffs looms large in capitals around the world, many trading partners have already retaliated or vowed to respond to Trump’s tariffs. China has imposed retaliatory tariffs as high as 15% on some U.S. agricultural products, such as chicken, wheat, soybeans, pork, fruits and dairy products.
Consumers’ economic pessimism is worsening as inflation stays hot and a series of new reports flash alarms before the White House expands its trade war.
In February — with much of Trump’s tariff agenda announced but not yet implemented — stubborn inflation collided with tepid spending, a closely watched federal report showed Friday. The data indicated many households are paring back on hotel stays and dining out to cover pricier groceries and health care.
The financial firm ING called the new numbers “ugly” and flagged ongoing stagflation risks, saying “we are moving in the wrong direction” as Trump’s trade war and spending cuts threaten to worsen things.
Wells Fargo analysts, who similarly warned of an “ugly” quarter ahead, said that if there’s one “silver lining” to the report, it’s that “income growth was broad and supported by decent wage gains.” But “to judge from consumers’ own reported inflation expectations, which have been rising, they are going to need the extra support,” they wrote. Consumers’ attitudes are indeed growing gloomier.
Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum took effect on March 12, triggering a wave of countermeasures from foreign governments. The temporary carveouts he granted Canada and Mexico for those metals and other products are set to expire today — when Trump is expected to unveil a vast new slate of tariffs on “all countries,” including “reciprocal” levies equalizing trade barriers around the world.
The European Commission said yesterday that it’s preparing to reintroduce the retaliatory duties it imposed during Trump’s first term as part of a broader series of levies on American products teed up for mid-April. Canada has already slapped 25% tariffs on various U.S. goods, including steel and aluminum.
Tariffs can give domestic business a short-term boost, economists say, but it gets more complicated once other countries retaliate — making it tough to game out the ultimate winners and losers in an ever-evolving global trade war.
Trump’s tariffs have been applied in an on-again-off-again way. So what tariffs are currently in effect? As of yesterday morning, a 25% tariff on goods not covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal are in effect. A 10% tariff on goods from China, on top of various tariffs already imposed on Chinese goods, plus a 25% tariff on worldwide steel and aluminum imports are in place.
The United States has more than 200 trading partners and 12,500 different tariff categories, so, according to analysts at UBS, there could be up to 2.5 million tariff and country combinations.
Even before today’s announcement, the mere threat of the higher tariffs has caused business and consumer sentiment to plummet.
The most recent report from the Conference Board showed consumer expectations for the next 12 months plunged to a 12-year low, while talk of tariffs has exploded in recent corporate earnings calls. In parallel, stocks just had their worst quarter since the Covid-19 pandemic.
