President Donald Trump
By Akeem Atoyebi
United States President, Donald Trump has announced a complete 90 days pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs that took effect at midnight, with the exception of China.
Trump disclosed his latest pivot on his Truth Social platform hours after goods from nearly 90 nations became subject to stiffer, so-called reciprocal tariffs imposed by the United States.
The US president also stated in a social media post that he was raising the tariffs imposed on imports from China to 125% “effective immediately” due to the “lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets.”
Trump stated “more than 75 Countries” contacted U.S. officials to negotiate after he unveiled his new tariffs last week.
Stock market indices went sharply higher Wednesday on Trump’s disclosure. The benchmark S&P 500 index jumped by 7%, which puts it on track for its largest single-day gain in five years.
Trump last week had said he would impose a baseline rate of 10% for tariffs on imports from more than 180 countries.
A subset of 90 countries’ imports would be subject to reciprocal tariffs, which ranged from a low of 11% to a high of 50%.
Financial markets have been in turmoil since Trump announced with plan, with U.S. stock markets suffering four straight days of declines as of Tuesday.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a tweet, said that he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sat with Trump while he wrote out the announcement on Truth Social, “one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency.”
“The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction,” Lutnick wrote.
The higher tariffs on China came after Beijing announced new retaliatory tariffs of 84% on US goods set to take effect on Thursday.
The Trump administration has taken particular aim at China’s trade practices.
“We will see what China does but what I’m certain of is what China is doing will affect their economy much more than ours,” Bessent said Wednesday.
Announcing China’s response, the State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement: “The US escalation of tariffs on China is a mistake upon mistake, severely infringing upon China’s legitimate rights and interests, and seriously damaging the multilateral trading system based on rules.”
The amped-up retaliation comes after China repeatedly warned that it would “fight to the end” if the US moved forward with further tariffs.
