President Donald Trump said on Monday that any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25% tariff on exports to the United States.
This “secondary tariff” will take effect on April 2, the president announced in a Truth Social post.
This week I expect the March lull before the April storm.
That didn’t take long. Wednesday afternoon the Federal Reserve decided to keep its benchmark interest rate steady–no rate cut. Wednesday night President Donald Trump renewed his call for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates as he criticized the central bank’s decision. “The Fed would be MUCH better off CUTTING RATES as U.S.Tariffs start to transition (ease!) their way into the economy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Do the right thing.” Trump added: “April 2nd is Liberation Day in America!!!” President Trump’s criticism of the Fed’s decision certainly isn’t a surprise.
The Washington Post is reporting today that White House aides are preparing new tariffs on most imports to be announced on April 2, laying the groundwork for an escalation in global tariffs that President Donald Trump has called “Liberation Day.”
I expect less drama than markets now fear from Wednesday’s meeting of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate-setting Open Market Committee.
President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 200% tariff on wine, champagne and other alcoholic beverages from France and elsewhere in the European Union, if Brussels follows through with a tariff on American whiskey exports, a measure aimed at retaliating against Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs that went into effect on Wednesday. What to do? This is serious. Life without champagne! Sacre bleu! We need a solution.
The Trump Administration raised tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 25% on Wednesday. And the European Union and Canada hit back Wednesday with tariffs of their own on billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. products.
After threatening to double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, President Donald Trump “back-tracked” and said he would not double those tariffs, but instead 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum would take effect on Canada and other nations on Wednesday, March 12.
So first stocks sold off after President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. Then stocks rallied when the White House said tariffs on auto imports from Mexico and Canada would be postponed by a month. Today, the tariff news is that higher duties on agricultural products imported from Mexico would be postponed fora month. But at the close today the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was down 1.58% and the NASDAQ Composite was off 2.11%. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index, the VIX “fear index,” was up 15.27% to 25.27. There was so much going on in the financial markets today that it’s impossible to say how much of today’s decline was due to a growing realization that delays of a month are essentially insufficient to reorder supply chains constructed by years or decades of investment.
President Donald Trump is exempting automakers from newly imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month, the White House said Wednesday, after pleas from U.S. automakers who have spent years building supply chains that stretch across international borders.
Two examples I’ve seen today suggest that consumers will feel the pain very soon.
Here’s a list from the New York Times of what’s been proposed by the Trump Administration that’s still pending.
