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By Sonam Sheth
Evening Politics Editor
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President Donald Trump reacted on Thursday to ongoing market turmoil over his sweeping tariffs targeting more than 180 countries.
The Context
U.S. stock futures nosedived on Wednesday evening as Trump announced that he would slap at least a 10 percent "baseline" tariff on all imports.
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He also singled out about 60 countries that would be hit with what he described as "discounted reciprocal tariffs" over their trade policies, which Trump believes are unfair.
By Thursday afternoon, Wall Street was on track for its worst day since 2022. As of 2:30 p.m. ET, the S&P 500 index had fallen 4.3 percent, while the Nasdaq had tumbled more than 5 percent.
Asian and European markets also fell sharply as economists, analysts and investors sounded the alarm about the potentially devastating impact Trump's tariffs could have on the global economy.
What To Know
A reporter asked Trump how he thinks things are going as U.S. markets continue plunging in response to his tariffs, which were announced on Wednesday.
"I think it's going very well," Trump replied. "It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it's a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country and we've never seen anything like it."
He added: "The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country's going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal. They've taken advantage of us for many, many years. And many years we've been at the wrong side of the ball and I'll tell you what, I think it's going to be unbelievable."
...
The Trump administration's tariffs encompassed a broad swath of countries: a 34 percent tariff on Chinese imports (in addition to a 20 percent tariff it was already slapped with), 20 percent on the European Union, 25 percent on South Korea, 24 percent on Japan, 32 percent on Taiwanese goods and 26 percent on Indian imports.
Some of the world's poorest countries faced some of the highest tariffs, including Lesotho (50 percent), Cambodia (49 percent), Vietnam (46 percent), Laos (48 percent) and more.
Trump did not say on Wednesday how the White House arrived at its "reciprocal" tariff calculations, but the administration later clarified in a post that it determined each country's rate using a formula based on dividing the U.S.'s trade deficit with a foreign country by that country's exports.
The White House halved that number to arrive at Trump's "discounted reciprocal" tariff for each country, which the president said he was doing to be "kind."
What Happens Next
A 25 percent tariff on auto imports went into effect on Thursday. The 10 percent "baseline" tariffs will take effect on April 5 and the reciprocal tariffs will kick in on April 9.
Update 04/03/25 3:32 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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