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Financial markets declined markedly Wednesday after Donald Trump unveiled steeper-than-expected retaliatory tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. from other nations.
A baseline 10% tariff was imposed on all nations, starting at midnight on Saturday. On April 9, a range of retaliatory tariffs are set to kick in, including 34% on imports from China (on top of the 20% already in place, the White House confirms) and 20% on anything brought in from the European Union.
Wielding a school-presentation-style tagboard with numbers, percentages and nations during a long-anticipated news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Trump today laid out the scheme in a characteristically rambling address. “April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed and the day that we began to make America wealthy again,” Trump proclaimed, trying to give more traction to his new slogan before wandering off and then back to sign the order officially putting the tariffs in place.
When exactly that wealth that Trump is promising will start flowing is already a point of contention.
As soon as POTUS detailed the specifics of the long-expected tariffs, exchange-traded funds tracking major stock market indices swung from Wednesday’s close of a gain of about 1% to a decline of 2%. After-hours trade in tech, medical and automotive stocks of companies apt to be hard-hit by the tariffs also plunged. As in previous trading sessions when markets cratered in anticipation of the tariffs, the big fear is that prices will rise sharply as a consequence, and that ultimately companies could lay off workers or otherwise retrench.
Responses from the EU, Canada, Mexico and others are expected in the coming hours to the factually challenged, stage-managed “Liberation Day” event at the White House Rose Garden.
The flag-drenched event was covered live by CNN, Fox News and BBC even before Trump stepped before the microphone, as well as on YouTube and TikTok. MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace stayed with a segment on the shellacking of a Trump- and Elon Musk-backed candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race for several minutes with a tiny POTUS live at the bottom right-hand side of the screen.
The tariffs ranging from 10% to 49% only doubles or triples down on the fact Trump has always been a believer in tariffs (since speeches he made 40 years ago, the president noted in one of dozens of tangents today). However, the former Celebrity Apprentice host has long had a greater faith in the power of the big show and the spotlight on him, which is what Trump wanted and received Wednesday in this spectacle after the market closed.
Whether the uncertainty that is already making itself evident in after-hours trading spirals into a deeper economic and political hole could depend on whether other nations treat the new tariffs as the opening of a negotiation or a deep end.