China dismisses Trump’s threat of extra 50% tariffs as his deadline looms
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the top news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.
The news comes on the third day of catastrophic market falls around the globe since Trump announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners.
As part of that move the White House announced it would impose a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on US imports.
In a statement on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president said that China enacted the retaliatory tariffs despite his “warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs” would be “immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set”.
“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote.
“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he added. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”
China’s US embassy said on Monday it would not cave to pressure or threats over the additional 50% tariffs. “We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesperson, told Agence France-Presse.
Read the full report here:
In other news:
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Donald Trump took questions from reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. In it, Trump indicated that he would attend “direct talks” with Iran on Saturday, that it “would be a good thing” to have the United States “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip”, and that European Union “rules and regulations” are “non-monetary barriers” on trade.
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Shortly after Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu, Iranian officials and state media disputed Trump’s claims that the US is scheduled to participate in “direct talks” with the country this weekend, indicating that the country understood it was entering indirect talks moderated by Omani officials.
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In a 5-4 decision, the US supreme court will allow the Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelan migrants under an 18th-century wartime law.
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After a phone call with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba this morning, Trump directed US treasury secretary Scott Bessent to open negotiations with the Japanese government.
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During speeches this afternoon, Democratic leadership in the House and Senate warned that Trump’s tariffs are teeing up “a nationwide recession”.
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After US stock markets opened this morning on bear market territory, the Cboe Volatility Index, also known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, reached “crisis levels” as it skyrocketed to its highest level since the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Canada has requested World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute consultations with the US over Trump’s decision to impose a 25% duty on cars and car parts from Canada, the WTO said today.
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Mexico is seeking to avoid retaliatory tariffs against the US but is not ruling them out, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said.
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The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision follows the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding for refugee resettlement.
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Health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr will direct the CDC to stop recommending states add fluoride to their drinking water.
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In a social media post, Trump backed the Senate’s budget proposal – lending his support to the plan as House speaker Mike Johnson tees up a vote on the budget later this week despite still not having enough votes to guarantee its passage.
Key events
The European Union still wants to avoid a trade war with the United States despite Donald Trump’s administration’s rejection of the “zero for zero” offer on all industrial goods put forward by Brussels, an EU spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Monday that the European Union needed to lower its non-tariff barriers, including those created by value-added taxes and food safety regulations, if it wanted to reach a deal.
“The situation hasn’t changed. We want to avoid tariffs … we are waiting for our American counterparts to engage in a meaningful way,” he said.
President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement on Monday that the United States and Iran were poised to begin direct talks on Tehran’s nuclear program, but Iran’s foreign minister said the discussions in Oman would be indirect.
In a further sign of the difficult path to any deal between the two geopolitical foes, Trump issued a stark warning that if the talks were unsuccessful, “Iran is going to be in great danger.”
Iran had pushed back against Trump’s demands in recent weeks that it directly negotiate over its nuclear program or be bombed, and it appeared to be sticking to that position on Monday.
“We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with visiting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tech-billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk made direct yet unsuccessful appeals to US president Donald Trump to reverse tariffs over the past weekend, Washington Post reported on Monday citing two people familiar with the matter.
This exchange marks the highest profile disagreement between the President and Musk, the report said. It follows Trump’s unveiling of a 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the US along with higher duties on dozens of other countries.
The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Musk, a Trump adviser who has been working to eliminate wasteful US public spending, called for zero tariffs between the US and Europe during a virtual interaction at a congress in Florence of Italy’s right-wing, co-ruling League Party over the weekend.
Tesla has seen its quarterly sales drop sharply amid a backlash against Musk’s work with a new “Department of Government Efficiency.” The company’s shares are trading at $233.29 as of its last close on Monday, down over 42% since the beginning of the year.
Musk has previously said that the impact of Trump’s auto tariffs on Tesla is “significant.”
President Donald Trump is seeking to expand the mining and use of coal inside the country in a bid to power the boom in data centers, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a senior White House official.
In an executive order that Trump is expected to sign on Tuesday afternoon, he will set out a number of steps by the government designed to reinvigorate the coal industry, the report said.
Marina Dunbar
A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures, advocates and protesters calling for their freedom.
Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside of Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the family after they were detained last month. The family has not been named or spoken out publicly.
Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.
She described the students as having “no ties to criminal activity” and that they are “loved in their classrooms”.
“We are in shock,” the letter reads. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”
The family was taken into custody in a 27 March raid at a large dairy farm in the remote town that has a population of fewer than 1,500 in Jefferson county in north-western New York state, on Lake Ontario near the Canadian border. The target of the raid was reportedly a South African national charged with trafficking in child sexual abuse material, whom they apprehended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents said.
But authorities separately picked up and detained the family, as well as three other immigrants they said were without documentation. The family was moved to the Karnes county immigration processing center, a privately run detention facility in Texas, by 30 March.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth landed in Panama late on Monday for his first official visit to the country as questions persist about President Donald Trump’s repeated vows to take back the Panama Canal.
During his trip this week, Hegseth will meet Panamanian officials as well as defense leaders from other Central American nations who are attending a security conference in Panama City.
Trump administration weighs drone strikes on Mexican cartels, NBC News reports
President Donald Trump’s administration is considering drone strikes on drug cartels in Mexico to combat trafficking across the southern border, NBC News reported on Tuesday.
It cited six current and former US military, law enforcement and intelligence officials with knowledge of the matter.
Netanyahu discusses Gaza and tariffs with Trump at White House meeting
Léonie Chao-Fong
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with Donald Trump on Monday for the second time since the US president’s return to office, marking the first effort by a foreign leader to negotiate a deal after Trump announced sweeping tariffs last week.
Speaking alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Netanyahu said Israel would eliminate the trade deficit with the US. “We intend to do it very quickly,” he told reporters, adding that he believed Israel could “serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same”.
Trump said the pair had a “great discussion” but did not indicate whether he would reduce the tariffs on Israeli goods. “Maybe not,” he said. “Don’t forget we help Israel a lot. We give Israel $4bn a year. That’s a lot.”
Trump denied reports that he was considering a 90-day pause on his tariff rollout. “We’re not looking at that,” he told reporters. “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals.”
European markets open higher after global sell-off driven by Trump tariffs
European stock markets have risen on Tuesday in early signs of a rebound from the punishing global sell-off triggered by US trade tariffs.
Stock markets in the UK and across the EU were in positive territory in early trading on Tuesday, as some investor optimism returned after heavy falls as a result of Donald Trump’s “liberation day’” tariff announcements last Wednesday.
London’s FTSE 100 index of blue-chip stocks was 106 points higher, up 1.4%, at 7811. In Frankfurt, Germany’s Dax was 1.5% higher while France’s CAC jumped by 1.4%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index rose 1.4%.
On the FTSE, theindustrial companies Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems were the biggest risers, up 5% and 4% respectively, followed by miners, oil companies and banks.
Investors are hoping that the market could stabilise as reports have emerged that the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, will lead trade talks with Tokyo, in a sign that the Trump administration will be open to negotiate on tariffs.
The news drove a modest rebound in Asian markets overnight, led by Japanese stocks. Tokyo’s Nikkei index recovered by 5.6%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose by 1.6% after its steepest drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis on Monday.
China dismisses Trump’s threat of extra 50% tariffs as his deadline looms
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the top news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.
The news comes on the third day of catastrophic market falls around the globe since Trump announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners.
As part of that move the White House announced it would impose a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on US imports.
In a statement on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president said that China enacted the retaliatory tariffs despite his “warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs” would be “immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set”.
“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote.
“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he added. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”
China’s US embassy said on Monday it would not cave to pressure or threats over the additional 50% tariffs. “We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesperson, told Agence France-Presse.
Read the full report here:
In other news:
-
Donald Trump took questions from reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. In it, Trump indicated that he would attend “direct talks” with Iran on Saturday, that it “would be a good thing” to have the United States “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip”, and that European Union “rules and regulations” are “non-monetary barriers” on trade.
-
Shortly after Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu, Iranian officials and state media disputed Trump’s claims that the US is scheduled to participate in “direct talks” with the country this weekend, indicating that the country understood it was entering indirect talks moderated by Omani officials.
-
In a 5-4 decision, the US supreme court will allow the Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelan migrants under an 18th-century wartime law.
-
After a phone call with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba this morning, Trump directed US treasury secretary Scott Bessent to open negotiations with the Japanese government.
-
During speeches this afternoon, Democratic leadership in the House and Senate warned that Trump’s tariffs are teeing up “a nationwide recession”.
-
After US stock markets opened this morning on bear market territory, the Cboe Volatility Index, also known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, reached “crisis levels” as it skyrocketed to its highest level since the Covid-19 pandemic.
-
Canada has requested World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute consultations with the US over Trump’s decision to impose a 25% duty on cars and car parts from Canada, the WTO said today.
-
Mexico is seeking to avoid retaliatory tariffs against the US but is not ruling them out, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said.
-
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision follows the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding for refugee resettlement.
-
Health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr will direct the CDC to stop recommending states add fluoride to their drinking water.
-
In a social media post, Trump backed the Senate’s budget proposal – lending his support to the plan as House speaker Mike Johnson tees up a vote on the budget later this week despite still not having enough votes to guarantee its passage.