Donald Trump has said he won’t pause tariffs, hours after he threatened China with an extra 50% levy while suggesting he is open to negotiations with other countries. In the UK, the FTSE closed down more than 4%. Follow the latest here and listen to the Daily podcast as you scroll.
Monday 7 April 2025 23:02, UK
We’ll be back tomorrow with more updates on the aftermath of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
In the meantime, here is a look at the key developments from today:
Donald Trump has said he is not looking to pause the tariffs which have plunged global markets into turmoil.
The taxes Trump imposed on goods from most countries resulted in the value of US stocks dropping sharply when markets opened today, following falls in London and across Europe and Asia earlier.
So what are tariffs? And how could it affect you?
Here, Sky’s business and economics reporter Sarah Taaffe-Maguire takes a look at the tariffs…
We reported earlier that Japan’s prime minister Shigeru Ishiba had spoken to Donald Trump and strongly urged him “to reconsider its measures” (see post at 7.40pm).
Now, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said he expects to have productive negotiations with Japan over the country’s high non-tariff barriers, adding he hoped negotiations could bring tariffs down.
“For countries that don’t retaliate, we are at a maximum tariff level, and it is my hope that through good negotiations, all we will do is see levels come down,” Bessent told Fox Business Network.
“But that’s going to depend on the other countries. And if President Trump is going to be personally involved in these negotiations, and he believes, as many of us do, that there’s been an unfair playing field, so the negotiation is going to be tough.”
For context: Japan has been impacted significantly as a result of Trump’s levies.
His decision to slap a 25% levy on auto imports and a reciprocal 24% tariff on other Japanese goods will likely deal a huge blow to the export-heavy economy.
The US has faced “systemically higher tariffs” for decades and the result is a “national emergency”, a senior Trump counsellor has said.
In an article for the Financial Times, Peter Navarro says a “long-overdue restructuring” by Trump would make the US and global economies “resilient and prosperous”, adding the “international trade system is broken” and Trump’s policies would “fix it”.
Navarro says the US had faced systematically higher tariffs from its major trading partners for decades under the World Trade Organisation and the result was “a national emergency” that threatened both the country’s economy and national security.
He also says at the “heart of this crisis” is a trade deficit in goods that has reached over “$1trn annually” and Trump’s policies therefore “held foreign countries accountable” – something he claims the WTO has failed to do.
“This is about fairness, and no one can argue with that. This is not a negotiation. For the US, it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system,” he writes.
Navarro yesterday suggested countries would need to do much more than simply lower their own tariff rates to reach deals, saying they would have to make structural changes to their tax and regulatory codes.
Over in the US, Wall Street’s volatility index, also known as the fear gauge, shows the markets have not been as volatile as this since the pandemic in 2020.
The most watched gauge of investor anxiety jumped to a new eight-month high yesterday as massive uncertainty dominated the stock markets after Trump’s unveiling of reciprocal tariffs.
And more volatility is yet to come.
Here, Sky’s business and economics reporter Gurpreet Narwan looks at the index and how the global markets are faring…
We have the final market figures from the New York Stock Exchange this evening.
The S&P 500 closed 0.23% lower at 5,062.25 points.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 0.91% at 37,965.60.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite ended the day up 0.10% at 15,603.26.
This morning as trading opened, US markets fell by nearly 4%.
After a choppy day of trading – with a brief rally after a false report that Donald Trump was considering a 90-day tariff pause – the New York Stock Exchange is closing shortly.
Trump just doubled down on his trade war as he spoke in the Oval Office, saying he was “not looking at” any pause in tariffs – despite the clear evidence today that even speculation of a pause would push stocks into the green… as you can see here:
Watch live in the stream below as the stock exchange closing bell rings at 9pm – and we’ll have the final numbers for the day shortly afterwards.
Continuing to take questions in the Oval Office, Donald Trump turns to the European Union, repeating criticism we’ve heard a lot in recent weeks.
The bloc “was formed to do damage to the US”, he says. “The countries formed together to create a bit of a monopoly situation – a unified force against the US for trade.
“They have NATO and they took advantage of us dollar-wise and militarily.”
He says the EU – which he hit with 20% tariffs last week – is “screwing us on trade” and they “have been bad to the US”.
He adds: “They don’t take our cars. They don’t take our agriculture products and yet they send millions of cars into the US.
“It’s not going to be that way. It’s not fair.”
He adds that trade with the EU has to be “fair and reciprocal”.
The US will not be pausing tariffs, Donald Trump says.
“We’re not looking at that,” he confirms.
The president says many countries have been negotiating with Washington and they will try and make “fair deals” with each of them.
Trump says the US has $36trn of debt “for a reason” and his administration will be talking to many countries, including China, to fix this.
“We’re going to get fair deals with every country and if we don’t they are not going to be able to participate with the US,” he adds.
He also says the US “has been ripped off by many countries over the years”.
“We can’t do it anymore. We can’t be the stupid people anymore,” he says.
Benjamin Netanyahu praises Trump as a true “friend of Israel”.
He says “you actually do things that you say you do” and “people respect that enormously”.
Moving on to tariffs, Netanyahu says: “We will eliminate the trade deficit with the US… We will do it very quickly and we think it is the right thing to do.”
He adds: “Israel can serve as a model for many countries” – referring to the many other nations hit by tariffs that are seeking trade deals with the US to avoid the worst effects.
“I recognise the position of the United States,” Netanyahu says. “I’m a free trade champion and free trade has to be fair trade.”
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