Summary
- Wall Street suffers its worst day since 2020 after Donald Trump announced a raft of worldwide tariffs last night
- In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney announces 25% tariffs on certain US vehicles
- The UK has drawn up a 400-page list of US products it could hit with tariffs - Henry Zeffman says it is a toughening up of Starmer’s stance
- Trump announced 10% tariffs on most countries - including the UK - from Saturday, with higher rates on some of America’s biggest trading partners from 9 April. We cover the basics in five key questions here
- As part of Your Voice, Your BBC News, our experts are answering your questions - including whether the UK is enjoying a “Brexit benefit” as well as the impact of tariffs on US customers and products
Media caption, How the US stock market is reacting to Trump’s tariffs…in 45 seconds
Live Reporting
Edited by Emily McGarvey
Scale of tariffs appear to have caught investors off-guard
As we’ve just reported, US stocks plunged today, with the S&P 500 suffering its biggest decline since March 2020. Investors are concerned that the tariffs unveiled on Wednesday raise the risk of a global trade war which may tip the US economy into a recession. The scale of the tariffs were not anticipated so appear to have caught investors off-guard. Shares of multinational companies tumbled. Nike and Apple dropped 13% and 10%, respectively. Tech shares dropped, with chip-makers Nvidia off 7% and Elon Musk’s Tesla down 5%. When asked about the market reaction to the tariffs, President Trump said: “The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal."
US market suffers biggest one-day loss since 2020
The US financial market experienced its biggest one-day loss since June 2020, the year of the pandemic. The Dow Jones tumbled 3.9%, the Nasdaq plunged nearly 6% and the S&P 500 was down 5% - its biggest decline since March 2020.
Hit with highest tariffs, Lesotho to plead case to US
Lesotho says it will send a government delegation to the US to plead its case after Washington imposed its highest tariffs - 50% - on its imports. The small southern African country’s Trade Minister, Mokhethi Shelile, has warned of factory closures and job losses. The US has a large trade deficit with Lesotho, which sells textiles and diamonds to America. Thousands of people in the country of 2.3 million people are employed making clothes for the US market under a tax-free initiative set up to help countries trade their way out of poverty.
Watch: Trump likens tariffs plan to medical ‘operation’
A short while ago, we heard from President Donald Trump before boarding Air Force One in Maryland. One reporter asked him how the tariffs were going, to which Trump said he thinks “it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing”. “We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country,” the US president says, “the markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom”. “And the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal,” he adds. “They’ve taken advantage of us for many, many years.” As a reminder, here is a list of the countries with the highest tariffs announced yesterday.
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