Trump spoke by phone with the prime minister of Japan today, both leaders said, as the key U.S. ally seeks a reprieve from tariffs.
Calling Trump’s 24% tariff on Japanese goods “extremely unfortunate,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba — whose country is the single-largest foreign investor in the U.S. — said he told Trump during their 25-minute call that he was “deeply concerned that these American tariff measures will reduce the investment capacity of Japanese companies.”
Earlier today, Ishiba — one of the first foreign leaders to visit the White House after Trump’s inauguration in January — told Japanese lawmakers that he would meet with Trump himself if necessary and that the tariffs were unjustified.
“We have not done anything that’s unfair, and I think we need to make that clear,” he said.
In a post on his Truth Social platform after their phone call, Trump said Ishiba was “sending a top team to negotiate! They have treated the U.S. very poorly on Trade.”
In South Korea, another key U.S. ally in Asia, Trade Minister Cheong In-kyo is preparing for a two-day visit to Washington this week for tariff negotiations, his ministry said today. Last week, Trump announced a 25% tariff on South Korean goods, in addition to existing tariffs on steel, aluminum, cars and auto parts.
“The government will put in all-out efforts in negotiations with the U.S. to minimize the impact of Washington’s trade policies on Korean businesses and industries,” the ministry said, according to the Yonhap news agency.
The U.S. is revoking the visas of all South Sudanese passport holders in the country, the State Department said, at a time when the East African nation is at risk of returning to civil war.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau confirmed that the decision was made after South Sudan refused “to accept one of their nationals certified by their own Embassy in Washington and repatriated to their country.”
“Effective immediately, all visa appointments are cancelled, no new visas will be issued, no existing visas will be effective, and hence NO ONE from South Sudan will be entering the United States on a visa until this matter is resolved,” he said in a post on X.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the move on Saturday, saying, “It is time for the Transitional Government of South Sudan to stop taking advantage of the United States.”
“Enforcing our nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States,” he said in a statement. “Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them.”
China could get a reduction in tariffs if it approves a deal to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations, Trump says.
“If I gave a little cut in tariffs, they’d approve that deal in 15 minutes, which shows you the power of tariffs,” he told reporters on Air Force One yesterday.
Trump confirmed reports that China and the U.S. had been “pretty close” to a deal on the short-video app, but that Beijing backed out due to the additional 34% tariff he announced on Chinese goods last week. On Friday, Trump extended the deadline by 75 days for TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations or face a ban.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters in Beijing today that China would handle any TikTok sale “in accordance with its laws and regulations.” He urged the U.S. to provide an “open, fair, just and nondiscriminatory business environment” for Chinese firms in the U.S.
ByteDance said Saturday that it was still in negotiations with the U.S. government and has not reached any agreement.
“There are still differences on many key issues between the two sides,” the company said in a statement. “According to Chinese law, any agreement must go through relevant review procedures.”
Malaysia, the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, will seek a consensus among the bloc’s 10 member states in response to Trump’s new tariffs, its prime minister said.
Malaysia “will continue to coordinate efforts to present a united regional front, maintain open and resilient supply chains,” Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in a video yesterday.
Anwar denied Trump’s claim that Malaysia imposes a 47% tariff on U.S. imports, which he used to justify a 24% tariff on Malaysian goods. But he said Malaysia would not retaliate until it resolved detailed issues with the U.S. and consulted with ASEAN members.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, whose city-state was hit by a baseline 10% tariff, said on Facebook last week that it is now “more important than ever” for ASEAN neighbors to strengthen cooperation and solidarity.
Southeast Asia’s largest economy, Indonesia, which is subject to a 32% tariff, also said it will not hit back at the U.S., The Jakarta Post reported, citing a top economic official.
Vietnam, home to the fourth-largest U.S. trade deficit and facing among the highest new tariffs, at 46%, has offered to cut its tariffs on U.S. goods to zero if it can negotiate a deal with the U.S.
Trump continued defending his policies this morning amid a stock market rout being felt around the world over his tariffs, telling people in a social media post to not be “weak” or “stupid.”
“The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO. Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!),” he wrote, an apparent play on the word “panic.”
“Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!” he continued.
A pedestrian passes the New York Stock Exchange this morning.Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Elon Musk posted a clip early this morning of economist Milton Friedman explaining how international trade makes it possible to make a pencil — effectively an argument in favor of free trade.
Musk’s post about Friedman, who was a prominent free trade advocate, appeared to indicate a break with Trump on tariff policies, which restrict the free market. Musk, a business tycoon, recently argued in favor of “zero-tariff situation” between the U.S. and Europe.
In the video, Friedman explained how different parts of a pencil likely originated from countries around the world.
“Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil, people who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met,” Friedman said.
Friedman added that the “magic of the price system” brought countries together to cooperate on efforts like making pencils.
“That is why the operation of the free market is so essential, not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world,” he concluded.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the reinstatement this morning of Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board.
The Trump administration had fired both of them, but the court says they can return to their roles after a review of the full court.
A judge had said that Trump lacked the authority to freely fire members of the NLRB, including Wilcox, who is the first Black woman to serve on the board.
Both Harris and Wilcox were appointed by Biden to the independent boards.
Stocks in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong suffered their largest single-day decline in nearly three decades today after China responded to Trump’s additional 34% tariff on Chinese and Hong Kong goods with the same levy on U.S. imports.
The Asian financial hub’s benchmark Hang Seng Index plunged 13.2%, the biggest one-day drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The market closed at 19,828.30, the lowest level since Jan. 23.
Mainland Chinese stocks also fell as markets returned after a public holiday Friday, leading the government to intervene to help stocks find a floor.
Pedestrians walk past a sign showing the closing price of the Hang Seng Index today.Peter Parks / AFP – Getty Images
Despite the stock market loss, the Hong Kong dollar — which is pegged to the U.S. dollar — remains strong and its financial system is stable, Financial Secretary Paul Chan told reporters.
Chan has criticized the U.S. tariffs as “bullying” and “unreasonable” but said Saturday that Hong Kong will not retaliate, remaining as a “free port.”
Analysts warn that Apple may soon face the tough decision to hike prices for its products to offset the impact of Trump’s tariffs, with the cost of an iPhone potentially shooting upwards of $3,000 if manufacturing shifts to the U.S.
Apple, which sells more than 220 million iPhones a year in the U.S., China and Europe, according to Reuters, mostly makes its products in 54% tariff-hit China.
But a shift in manufacturing, along with Apple choosing to pass on the cost to customers, could see the cheapest iPhone 16 model cost as much as $1,142, a staggering 43% rise in cost, according to calculations based on projections from analysts at Rosenblatt Securities, Reuters reported.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told Bloomberg TV last week, “If you want $3,500 iPhones, we should build them in New Jersey, we should build them in Texas. If you like $1,000 iPhones, you build them in China.”
The British government eased its targets for the production of electric vehicles yesterday in an attempt to offer a reprieve to an automotive industry that was slapped with a 25% tariff on U.S. exports on last week.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said yesterday that his government’s new measures would allow auto manufacturers to sell full hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles until 2035 and see a reduction in fines if they cannot comply with EV sales targets.
He added that the 2030 phase-out date for new petrol and diesel cars would remain in place.
The U.K. exported more than 1 million cars, mainly luxury and premium, worth about 7.6 billion pounds ($9.79 billion) to the U.S. last year, Reuters reported, which forms the country’s second-largest export market after the European Union.
Mike Hawes, head of the UK auto industry group SMMT, told Reuters that while the automotive sector welcomed the move, the government would need to implement a package of measures to support car manufacturing, which directly employs about 200,000 workers.
Jaguar Land Rover, one of the UK’s biggest auto producers, said Saturday it would pause car shipments to the U.S. for a month to consider how to offset tariff-related costs.
Meanwhile, Tesla shares slid 4.4% this morning as the EV maker’s supply chain continues to face headwinds from Trump’s tariffs.
“The economic tariff Armageddon unleashed by the Trump Administration is a double whammy for Tesla in our view,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote, CNBC reported.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said today that Beijing has lodged “stern” representations with the U.S. over media reports that a delegation from Taiwan is in Washington for secret talks.
The Financial Times first reported Saturday that Taiwan security chief Joseph Wu and his entourage have arrived in Washington for talks with the Trump administration, which comes as Beijing ramps up military drills around the self-governing island it views as a breakaway province.
“China firmly opposes any form of official interactions between the U.S. and Taiwan,” Lin Jian, spokesperson for China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said at a briefing in Beijing.
Though the U.S. has no official relations with Taiwan, it is the island democracy’s most important international backer and is bound by law to provide it with defensive weapons in the face of threats from Beijing, which has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its unification goal.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing considers a “separatist” and “troublemaker,” will not succeed in seeking “independence” by relying on the U.S., Lin said, urging the U.S. to refrain from creating new tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing has rebuffed offers of talks from Lai, who says only the island’s 23 million people can decide its future.
As European trade ministers hold an emergency meeting this morning to consider retaliatory tariffs, many leaders from the 27-member bloc are calling for a calm and measured response to Trump.
Ireland’s trade minister, Simon Harris, said this morning that there was a strong consensus among E.U. members for a “calm, measured” response to Trump’s tariffs.
“I’ve spoken to most of my European counterparts … and my strong sense now is that the majority view by some distance is to take a calm, measured response and to try and get the U.S. to the table,” Harris told Newstalk Radio, according to Reuters.
His words were echoed by Dutch Trade Minister Reinette Klever, who said the E.U. needed to respond “in a way that de-escalates” the situation and leads to further negotiations.
A trader works in front of a board displaying the chart of Germany’s share index DAX at the stock exchange in Frankfurt am Main today.Daniel Roland / AFP – Getty Images
“We need to get ourselves at the table with the Americans and see how we can lower these tariffs,” Klever said, according to Reuters, before adding that Europe would be prepared to take countermeasures if needed “to get the Americans at the table.”
Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised speech before the meeting that his country “insists on a unified response so that we can be effective on a E.U.-27 level.”
The emergency trade meeting was called after Trump’s sweeping tariffs shook European stock markets early this morning and saw shares plunging.
China hasn’t ruled out negotiating with the U.S. following Trump’s reciprocal tariffs but the country is well-prepared to deal with the impact, Chinese state media said yesterday.
“Faced with the volatility and extreme pressure from the U.S., we have not closed the door to negotiations,” said an editorial published in People’s Daily. “But we will not harbor any illusions. Instead, we have made various preparations to deal with the impact.”
China has accumulated “rich experience” in its eight-year trade war with the U.S., it said, adding that the central government is ready to use monetary policy tools such as interest rate cuts “at any time.”
“The sky hasn’t fallen,” the article said, noting that Beijing had decreased its dependence on the U.S. market, with China’s exports to the U.S. dropping to 14.7% in 2024 from 19.2% in 2018.
Trump defended his economic policies in an early morning post ahead of the U.S. stock market opening.
He claimed that there was “no inflation,” though inflation stood at 2.8% in February, the most recent month with public inflation data. But JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in a shareholder letter today that the tariffs “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.”
In his post, Trump also called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. The Fed left interest rates unchanged last month, noting that “uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased.”
Trump criticized China for announcing 34% tariffs on goods imported from the U.S., saying that China was “not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said today that Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will likely raise prices on both domestic and imported products and slow down economic growth.
“We are likely to see inflationary outcomes, not only on imported goods but on domestic prices, as input costs rise and demand increases on domestic products,” Dimon, who has run the largest U.S. bank for nearly two decades, wrote in an annual letter to shareholders.
While it’s still unknown whether the tariffs will cause a recession, the duties will slow down growth in the U.S. economy, he said.
There are many “uncertainties” surrounding the new tariff policy, including potential retaliatory actions from other countries and the possible impact on the U.S. dollar, he said.
“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” he wrote.
A pair of prominent Democratic members of Congress will host a “shadow” hearing Monday seeking to spotlight what they describe as President Donald Trump’s attacks on the rule of law.
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., will lead the event Monday afternoon, with Schiff telling NBC News he hopes the hearing will help “shed a light” on the “rampant” abuses in the first few months of the Trump administration.
As stocks continue to sell off around the globe, shares in Chinese tech giants are not immune — they’ve lost all their gains since Trump took office. Hong Kong’s tech index took a massive blow, swooning around 18%, with China’s MSCI Tech 100 down 17%.
“In a trade war, there are only losers. Some people lose less than others,” says Edward Felten, a former White House chief technology officer and currently the chief scientist at Offchain Labs. “There is an opportunity cost when you have friction, barriers and uncertainty.”
Still, Felten says the tariffs, which will increase the price for U.S. to buy technology equipment from places like Taiwan, will potentially create an opportunity for China, which already shook investors when it launched DeepSeek and claimed its AI advancements were achieved at a fraction of the cost endured by U.S. companies like OpenAI.
Chinese tech stocks may be down today, but in the long run, tariffs “will hurt U.S. businesses,” he said. “It creates opportunity for China.”
Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Ling Ji told U.S. companies in China including Tesla that the country will always protect their rights and interests.
“China has been, is, and will continue to be a fertile ground for ideal, secure, and promising investment by foreign businesses,” Ling said yesterday at a meeting in Beijing attended by more than 20 U.S.-funded companies, according to the country’s Ministry of Commerce.
Beijing on Friday hit back at Trump’s additional 34% tariff on Chinese goods with the same duty on U.S. goods imported to China, further escalating trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
The U.S. “reciprocal” tariffs “seriously undermined the rules-based multilateral trading system,” Ling said, stressing that the “root cause of the tariff issue lies with the United States.”
Europe’s defense giants are leading losses from Trump’s tariffs after shares in European defense companies plunged this morning.
Shares of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall sank as low as 27% at the open, with the company briefly on track for its worst day on record, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, German defense giant Thyssenkrupp fell 10% and Swedish defense manufacturer Saab tumbled 7.3%. Italy’s Leonardo saw trading halted after a sharp fall of 13% in the aerospace and defense company’s shares.
European defense companies saw a surge in recent months after governments, responding to Trump’s call to ramp up defense spending, began boosting their defense budgets.
Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump for president in 2024, said that while he supported Trump’s efforts to change the global tariff regime, the president “is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe.”
Bill Ackman.Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg via Getty Images
“By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital,” Ackman, the chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, said in a post on X.
Ackman urged Trump to call a 90-day time-out to allow time to “negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals,” and to keep markets from crashing, consumer spending and business investment from drying up and the U.S.’ global reputation from suffering.
Otherwise, he said, “we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down.”
Goldman Sachs has raised the odds of a U.S. recession to 45% from 35%, the second time it has increased its forecast in a week amid a growing chorus of such predictions by investment banks due to an escalating trade war.
Goldman has raised its estimate from 20% early last week on fears that Trump’s planned tariffs would roil the global economy. Days later, Trump announced steeper-than-expected duties, which have ignited a sell-off in global markets.
Since then, at least seven top investment banks have raised their recession risk forecasts, with J.P.Morgan putting the odds of a U.S. and global recession at 60%, on fears that the tariffs will not only ignite U.S. inflation but also draw retaliatory measures from other countries.
European Union trade ministers are holding an emergency meeting in Luxembourg this morning to consider the E.U.’s response to Trump’s tariffs, which include a 20% levy on most imports from the 27-member bloc.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that while the E.U. is willing to negotiate, is also prepared to respond with countermeasures to the latest 20% levy, which takes effect Wednesday, as well as Trump’s earlier 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Uzbekistan last week.Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP – Getty Images
Later today the European Commission is expected to publish a final list of American products that it will target in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs, including meat, cereals, wine, wood and bourbon. Member states are expected to vote on that list on Wednesday.
If approved, the E.U. would join China and Canada in imposing retaliatory tariffs as fears of a global trade war continue to mount. The first E.U. tariffs would take effect April 15.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said yesterday that he won’t retaliate against the 32% tariffs Trump slapped on the island last week.
“Taiwan has no plans to adopt retaliatory tariffs,” Lai said during a recorded speech yesterday in which he cited the island’s resilience and the fact that its exports to the U.S. were valued at more than $110 billion last year.
Market figures at the Taiwan Stock Exchange today.I-Hwa Cheng / AFP – Getty Images
Instead, Taiwan will import more American goods and expand its investments in the U.S., he said, adding that it can start talking with U.S. negotiators about a Taiwan-U.S. bilateral zero-tariff treatment. “Working together, we’ll usher in a golden age of shared prosperity,” Lai wrote in a post on X today.
Taiwan shares have plunged over 9% to hit a one-year low, with stocks of the island’s top chipmaker TSMC declining nearly 10%, according to CNBC. The U.S., which has no official relations with Taiwan, is the Beijing-claimed island’s most important international backer.
As Asian stocks plummeted during early trading today, Trump said that his tariffs are the only way to solve “financial Deficits with China, the European Union, and many others.”
“Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform, adding that the tariffs are bringing “Tens of Billions of Dollars” into the U.S.
Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images
While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One yesterday, Trump said that foreign governments would have to pay “a lot of money” to lift the sweeping tariffs and called them “medicine,” leading to global financial markets convulsing even further.
“I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock market futures opened sharply lower as investors expressed concerns over the risk of a global recession brought on by higher prices, weaker demand and lower confidence.
Markets in Europe followed the plunge in Asia today, with London’s FTSE 100 index falling over 5% in its early hours of trading.
Germany’s DAX index appeared to lead the rout in Europe, falling as much as 10% early today. Rheinmetall, a German defense manufacturer that had enjoyed a rally from Europe’s push to be self-reliant in defense, plunged over 14%.
France’s CAC 40 and the Swiss market index also fell 6% as the fallout from Trump’s tariffs extended to the broader European Union, which is meeting in Luxembourg today to consider its response.
The fallout of Trump’s tariffs is still reverberating around the world, including in Asia, where markets opened to a bloodbath, triggering circuit breakers in some places.
The Chinese territory of Hong Kong, where trading resumed after a holiday on Friday, led losses in the region, with the Hang Seng Index plunging 11% in one of its biggest single-day falls, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 index lost more than 7% in value.
Chinese stock market movements in Beijing today.Wang Zhao / AFP – Getty Images
Trading was briefly halted in Japan after Nikkei 225 and Topix futures briefly dipped below 8% — activating automatic circuit-breakers that stop a market freefall. The broader Topix index in Japan, and China’s CSI 300 index, also recorded similar losses. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 extended losses to 5.3%.
In South Korea, where the Kospi index recorded a 5% plunge, authorities announced they were prepared to provide up to 100 trillion won ($68 billion) in emergency liquidity and other market stabilization measures.
Trump this morning is set to host the Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of the 2024 World Series.
Shortstop Mookie Betts told reporters last week that he will be in attendance, despite previously declining Trump’s invitation to visit the White House in 2019 when Betts played for the Boston Red Sox.
Trump will hold a joint news conference this afternoon with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said.
The prime minister’s visit comes less then a week after Trump imposed a 17% tariff on Israeli goods, even though the country had canceled all its tariffs on goods from the U.S., its largest trading partner.
Netanyahu will seek relief from the tariffs, he said in a statement yesterday. He will be the first world leader to meet with the president in person to negotiate tariffs after Trump’s sweeping announcement last week.
