On April 5, US President Donald Trump introduced basic tariffs of 10% on most imported goods. With this, he continued the implementation of his economic strategy aimed at stimulating domestic investment and supporting companies seeking to avoid import taxation, informs Bloomberg.
Although the base duty has already come into force, in some cases the increased rates, which will replace the base duty rather than add to it, will come into effect from April 9. The new tariffs raised U.S. tariffs to the highest level in more than a century, dealing a major blow to the post-World War II global trading system that Trump has repeatedly called unfair to the United States.
Against the background of this decision, the American stock markets experienced a sharp collapse. The S&P 500 fell to an 11-month low, losing $5.4 trillion in market value in just two trading sessions at the end of the week. This was the largest two-day drop since the pandemic began in March 2020.
At the same time, Trump said that he is ready to reduce tariffs if other countries make him an offer, which he called “phenomenal”. He said he is discussing softening of the proposed tariffs with representatives of Vietnam, India and Israel.
“Every country called us. That’s the appeal of what we’re doing: we put ourselves in the driver’s seat. As long as they give us something good. For example, if you take TikTok as an example, we have the situation with TikTok where China will probably say, ‘We’ll approve the deal, but are you going to do anything about tariffs?’. Tariffs give us a lot of bargaining power. They always have.” – explained Trump
