‘Hang tough, it won’t be easy’: Trump defiant on tariffs
Donald Trump on Saturday doubled down on the sweeping tariffs he unleashed on countries around the world, warning Americans of pain ahead, but promising historic investment and prosperity.
The comments came as the US president’s widest-ranging tariffs took effect in a move that could trigger retaliation and escalating trade tensions that could upset the global economy.
“We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post,’ but not any longer. We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
“This is an economic revolution, and we will win,” he added. “Hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic.”
A 10% “baseline” tariff came into place just after midnight, hitting most US imports except goods from Mexico and Canada as Trump invoked emergency economic powers to address perceived problems with the country’s trade deficits.
The trade gaps, said the White House, were driven by an “absence of reciprocity” in relationships and other policies like “exorbitant value-added taxes”.
Come 9 April, about 60 trading partners – including the European Union, Japan and China – are to face even higher rates tailored to each economy.
Already, Trump’s sharp 34%tariff on Chinese goods, to kick in next week, triggered Beijing’s announcement of its own 34% tariff on US products from 10 April.
Beijing also said it would sue the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and restrict the export of rare-earth elements used in high-end medical and electronics technology.
“China has been hit much harder than the USA, not even close,” Trump said in his post. “They, and many other nations, have treated us unsustainably badly.”
But other major trading partners held back as they digested the unfolding international standoff amid fears of a recession.
Key events
The stock market plunge has more to do with the emergence this year of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence tool than with Donald Trump’s policies, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in an interview released on Friday that signaled little concern about the ongoing nosedive, reports Reuters.
“For everyone who thinks these market declines are all based on the president’s economic policies, I can tell you that this market decline started with the Chinese AI announcement of DeepSeek,” Bessent told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“If I were to analyse in my old hat, and this is the only time I’m going to talk about it … what’s happening with the market I’d say it’s more a Mag 7 problem, not a Maga problem,” Bessent, who ran a hedge fund until being tapped as treasury secretary by Trump, said.
“Mag 7” refers to the shares of the “Magnificent 7” – a group of seven high-performing tech stocks that had helped drive the market higher before its recent selloff. Maga refers to Trump’s “Make America great again” political slogan.
US stocks have tumbled by about 10% in the two days after Trump announced a new global tariff regime that was more aggressive than analysts and investors had been anticipating.
It is a drop that market analysts and large investors themselves have laid at the feet of Trump’s aggressive push on tariffs, which most economists and the head of the Federal Reserve believe risk stoking inflation and damaging economic growth, reports Reuters.
Stocks did take a hit in late January when Chinese startup DeepSeek launched a free AI assistant that it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent services. It resulted in a record one-day loss of nearly $600bn in value from the shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia, one of the “Magnificent 7”. But the market soon found its footing again and by mid-February, the benchmark S&P 500 index had regained a record-high level.
Then stocks turned south again starting in late February after a widely followed survey of consumers showed households growing broadly pessimistic about the economy’s prospects and fearful that Trump’s push for tariffs would drive up inflation, reports Reuters.
A raft of other surveys of businesses and consumers since then have flagged similar concerns, and other data has shown the pace of activity has slowed over the course of the first quarter of 2025. The S&P has lost nearly 14% since 19 February, and nearly $10tn of US stock market value has been erased.
The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has been dismissive of the drop as well.
Trump himself on Friday retweeted a social media post bearing the caption “Trump is Purposely CRASHING The Market” and featuring images of the president pointing at a large downward red arrow and of him signing executive orders at the White House.
Meanwhile, Bessent also told Carlson the administration retains a “strong dollar” policy and dismissed assertions by some analysts that the tariff drive was a deliberate effort to weaken the dollar to make US goods more competitive on global markets.
“No one should listen to anyone in the markets talk about the US dollar other than President Trump or myself,” Bessent said. “We are the only ones that speak for this administration, the United States government on dollar policy.”
“We have a strong-dollar policy and we are putting in all of the necessary ingredients to make sure the dollar is strong over the long run,” he said.
The dollar has shed nearly 6% of its value against major trading partners’ currencies since Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, reports Reuters.
‘Hang tough, it won’t be easy’: Trump defiant on tariffs
Donald Trump on Saturday doubled down on the sweeping tariffs he unleashed on countries around the world, warning Americans of pain ahead, but promising historic investment and prosperity.
The comments came as the US president’s widest-ranging tariffs took effect in a move that could trigger retaliation and escalating trade tensions that could upset the global economy.
“We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post,’ but not any longer. We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
“This is an economic revolution, and we will win,” he added. “Hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic.”
A 10% “baseline” tariff came into place just after midnight, hitting most US imports except goods from Mexico and Canada as Trump invoked emergency economic powers to address perceived problems with the country’s trade deficits.
The trade gaps, said the White House, were driven by an “absence of reciprocity” in relationships and other policies like “exorbitant value-added taxes”.
Come 9 April, about 60 trading partners – including the European Union, Japan and China – are to face even higher rates tailored to each economy.
Already, Trump’s sharp 34%tariff on Chinese goods, to kick in next week, triggered Beijing’s announcement of its own 34% tariff on US products from 10 April.
Beijing also said it would sue the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and restrict the export of rare-earth elements used in high-end medical and electronics technology.
“China has been hit much harder than the USA, not even close,” Trump said in his post. “They, and many other nations, have treated us unsustainably badly.”
But other major trading partners held back as they digested the unfolding international standoff amid fears of a recession.
On the topic of garments and Donald Trump’s tariffs, my colleague, the Guardian’s deputy fashion and lifestyle editor, Chloe Mac Donnell, has written about how from farmers to designers, the entire fashion supply chain will be hit. It is unclear what duties apply to a finished product, she writes in this piece:
Leading garment producer Bangladesh holds crisis talks on US tariffs
Bangladesh’s interim leader called an emergency meeting on Saturday after textile leaders in the world’s second-largest garment manufacturing nation said US tariffs were a “massive blow” to the key industry, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Textile and garment production accounts for about 80% of exports in Bangladesh, and the industry has been rebuilding after it was hard hit in a revolution that toppled the government last year.
Donald Trump on Wednesday slapped punishing new tariffs of 37 % on Bangladesh, increasing duties from the previous 16% on cotton and 32% on polyester products.
Bangladesh exports $8.4bn of garments annually to the US, according to data from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the national trade body. That totals about 20% of Bangladesh’s total ready-made garments exports, reports afp.
“Chief adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus has convened an emergency meeting … to discuss the US tariff issue,” a government statement read, with the meeting to take place late Saturday in the capital, Dhaka. Top experts, advisers and officials will attend, it added.
Bangladesh’s tax authority, the National Board of Revenue, is also expected to meet to review the fallout from the tariffs.
Rakibul Alam Chowdhury, chair of RDM Group, a major manufacturer with an estimated $25m turnover, said on Thursday that the industry would lose trade. “Buyers will go to other cost-competitive markets – this is going to be a massive blow for our industry,” he said.
Several garment factories produce clothing for the US market alone, report AFP. Anwar Hossain, administrator of the BGMEA, has told AFP that the industry was “not ready” for the tariff impact.
Bangladesh, the second-largest producer after China, manufactures garments for global brands – including for US firms such as Gap Inc, Tommy Hilfiger and Levi Strauss.
Jaguar Land Rover to pause shipments to the US as it works to ‘address new trading terms’
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has confirmed it will “pause” shipments to the US as it works to “address the new trading terms” of Donald Trump’s tariffs, reports the PA news agency.
In a statement on Saturday, a JLR spokesperson said:
The USA is an important market for JLR’s luxury brands.
As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid to longer-term plans.”
Earlier on Saturday, the Times had reported that JLR would pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States for a month (see 11.48am BST).
“Today, America is not only humiliating Iran, but also the world,” the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Saturday, in an apparent reference to recent policies adopted by Donald Trump, including imposing tariffs on imported goods.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Pezeshkian said his country was willing to engage in dialogue with the US as equals, without clarifying whether Tehran would participate in direct talks.
It came after the US president, who has called on Tehran to hold direct negotiations on its nuclear programme, threatened to bomb Iran if diplomacy fails.
Anti-Trump protests expected in US today
Kira Lerner
Away from tariff news, left-leaning organisations in the US say that more than 500,000 people are expected to take to the streets to protest in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere around the country on Saturday to oppose Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.
MoveOn, one of the organizations planning the day of protest they’re calling Hands Off along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests are planned across the US, including at state capitols.
“This is shaping up to be the biggest single-day protest in the last several years of American history,” Ezra Levin, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups planning the event, said on a recent organizing call.
The largest event is expected to be on the National Mall in Washington DC, where members of Congress, including the Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are scheduled to speak to crowds.
China has said “the market has spoken” in rejecting Trump’s tariffs, and called on Washington for “equal-footed consultation” after global markets plunged in reaction to the trade levies that drew Chinese retaliation.
Trump introduced additional 34% tariffs on Chinese goods as part of steep levies imposed on most U.S. trade partners, bringing the total duties on China this year to 54%.
Trump also closed a trade loophole that had allowed low-value packages from China to enter the U.S. duty-free.
This prompted retaliation from China on Friday, including extra levies of 34% on all U.S. goods and export curbs on some rare earths, escalating the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan told public broadcaster RTHK, however, Hong Kong would not impose separate countermeasures, citing the need for the city to remain “free and open”.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said:
The market has spoken.
Now is the time for the U.S. to stop doing the wrong things and resolve the differences with trading partners through equal-footed consultation.
Phillip Inman
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, says he is prepared to dance if it means sidestepping some of the worst of Donald Trump’s trade tariffs. Last week he sent a letter to India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, urging her to join him in a tango to celebrate 75 years of bilateral trade.
Xi said it was “the right choice” for the two countries to be “partners of mutual achievement and realise the ‘Dragon-Elephant Tango’”, which, he added, “fully serves the fundamental interests of both countries and their peoples.”
Beijing is on a wide-ranging charm offensive, aimed at redirecting its exports away from the US to other willing destinations as Washington erects trade barriers.
Tariffs on China imposed by the US president amounting to 20% earlier this year were more than doubled last week to 54% and an effective average rate of 65%, raising the cost of Chinese imports to a level that many analysts believe will be uncompetitive.
The response from Beijing was swift. A sell-off on financial markets intensified after China’s finance ministry said it would respond in kind, adding 34% to the tariff on all US goods from 10 April.
Investors worry that a recession in the US cannot be ruled out as the trade war intensifies and companies hunker down, cutting investment and jobs to weather the storm.
John Denton, head of the International Chambers of Commerce, likens the onset of these tariff wars to the oil shock of the 1970s, such is its seismic importance. “The overriding theme is the battle for supremacy between China and the US for global trade dominance,” he said.
China has taken and will continue to take resolute measures to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests, the foreign ministry said on Saturday, citing a Chinese government stance on opposing US tariffs.
The US should “stop using tariffs as a weapon to suppress China’s economy and trade, and stop undermining the legitimate development rights of the Chinese people,” the ministry said, according to Reuters.
Trump introduced additional 34% tariffs on Chinese goods as part of steep levies imposed on most US trade partners, bringing the total duties on China this year to 54%.
This prompted retaliation from China on Friday, including extra levies of 34% on all US goods and export curbs on some rare earths, escalating the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Jaguar Land Rover will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States for a month, as it considers how to mitigate the cost of president Donald Trump’s 25% tariff, according to a report in the Times newspaper.
Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Reuters on Saturday.
A pause in shipments would add to fears over the impact from tariffs on the UK’s car industry, which employs 200,000 people directly. The US is the second-biggest importer of British-made cars after the European Union, with nearly a 20% share, data from industry body SMMT shows, reports Reuters.
Jaguar Land Rover, one of the UK’s biggest producers by volume, sells 400,000 Range Rover Sports, Defenders and other models annually. Exports to the US account for almost a quarter of those sales.
The US 25% tariff on imported cars and light trucks took effect on 3 April. The previous day, Trump announced tariffs on other goods from countries across the globe, upending world trade.
The Times said that Jaguar Land Rover is thought to have a couple of months’ supply of cars already in the US, which will not be subject to the new tariffs.
Taiwan president Lai Ching-te met tech executives on Saturday to discuss how to respond to new US tariffs, promising to ensure Taiwan’s global competitiveness and safeguard its interests, reports Reuters.
President Donald Trump announced across-the-board import tariffs on Wednesday with much higher duties for dozens of trading partners, including Taiwan, which runs a large trade surplus with the US and is facing a 32% duty on its products. The US tariffs, however, do not apply to semiconductors, a major Taiwanese export.
Lai met the executives at his official residence to discuss the response to “the global economic and trade challenges brought about by the reciprocal tariff policy”, his spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement. She did not say which companies were present, only that there were several representatives from the information and communications technology, or ICT, industry.
Lai “hopes to give industry the greatest support, stabilise the economic situation, ensure Taiwan’s industry’s global competitiveness, and safeguard our country’s national interests and the continued steady progress of our economy”, Kuo said.
Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and an important supplier to companies including Apple and Nvidia. TSMC did not immediately respond to a request by Reuters for comment on whether it attended the meeting. TSMC is in its quiet period ahead of first quarter earnings announcement on 17 April.
On Friday, Taiwan’s government announced T$88bn ($2.67bn/£2.07bn) in financial help for companies and industries to deal with the impact of the US tariffs.
Taiwan, which says the tariffs are unreasonable, has said it will discuss them with the US and has not announced any retaliatory tariffs.
Pippa Crerar
US president Donald Trump has long been an advocate of tariffs – once describing them as the most beautiful word in the dictionary – and his promise to impose them was a central plank of his presidential election campaign. In anticipation, Downing Street developed a defensive strategy that revolved around building a strong relationship with Trump’s White House – despite clear political differences – and launching talks to strike an economic deal that would secure tariff exemptions.
Trade talks between the UK and US began soon after Trump’s inauguration, before the prime minister visited Washington in February, with the goal of agreeing a relatively narrow deal focused on advanced technologies. Talks intensified before UK business secretary Jonathan Reynolds’ own visit to meet Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, just over two weeks ago.
UK officials were assured by their US counterparts that they were in a strong position to negotiate a trade deal with Washington. “By then we knew what the faultlines were, and we were broadly there, so we just had some details to thrash out,” an official said.
The two key figures leading the negotiations are Reynolds and Varun Chandra, a corporate strategist turned senior No 10 aide known as the prime minister’s “business whisperer”. Officials have been impressed by how Chandra has navigated the US administration. “He just gets them, and they get him. The talks have been much more corporate in tone than trade negotiations usually are. That’s his world,” one said.
A senior trade department official, Kate Joseph, and Keir Starmer’s economic international affairs adviser, Michael Ellam, have been working behind the scenes at home to get the Whitehall machine ready. Multiple scenarios were drawn up depending on what tariff regime Trump imposed.