Donald Trump has labelled today “Liberation Day” and will reveal the extent of his promised tariffs later – meanwhile, the world waits uncertainly. Sky News has been given some detail around what to expect. Listen to Trump 100 as you scroll.
Wednesday 2 April 2025 18:32, UK
Moving briefly away from tariffs again for a moment and back to the latest news surrounding Elon Musk.
A senior White House official earlier confirmed to our US partner network NBC News that Donald Trump told his cabinet members Musk would be leaving his government role in the coming months.
Reacting to this, US correspondent Mark Stone says: “There are some who I think will make a lot of this and will say this is the moment that Trump and Musk have fallen out – we knew it would come and so it has.
“I think maybe the other view is that, actually, his work is almost done. Or his damage, as some would say, is almost done.
“The Musk show, that grip on government tearing down, regulation and bureaucracy, has come to an end, and he has to get back to his own job.
“We will see at some stage in the weeks ahead that Musk will take a back seat and perhaps return to Austin, Texas, and run his own companies.”
House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has hit out at Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying they will make things more expensive for everyday Americans.
“America is too expensive,” he told reporters at a weekly news conference. “Costs aren’t going down in America, they’re going up. And the Trump tariffs are going to make things more costly.”
“This is not liberation day,” he adds. “It’s recession day.”
Another Democrat has labelled Trump’s tariff wars an “overreach” in service of a personal agenda.
Peter Welch, senator for Vermont, told CNBC today that tariff disagreements between Trump and Democrats go beyond typical party differences.
“We believe what President Trump is doing is, in many cases, lawless and really beyond any norms,” he said.
“There’s a real abdication by Congress of its own authority.”
A source close to the White House has told our economics and data editor Ed Conway there will different bands of tariffs.
The bands will differ both by country and by industry.
The specific band each country or industry is placed into will depend on how the White House views each country’s barriers to entry for trade.
Conway added that how a tariff is defined is open to interpretation.
Trump wants to mirror tariffs imposed by countries on US imports – but the UK’s 20% VAT rate could, for the White House, count as a tariff.
China’s economy is already struggling. Growth has slowed dramatically in recent years, and there is high youth employment.
Since the beginning of March, there’s also been a tax of 20% on any goods sold to the US.
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day”, what effect are tariffs already having on the Chinese economy?
Niall Paterson speaks to Sky’s Asia correspondent Helen-Ann Smith, who has been to Guangdong province to find out how manufacturing is being impacted.
They also discuss how the tariffs will play into President Xi’s narrative of a resurgent global China.
By James Sillars, business and economics reporter
There’s a sense of dread among financial market investors as the clock ticks down to 9pm.
That’s the time in the UK when Donald Trump will announce his big package of tariffs, which could apply globally.
Some, such as the EU, may fare worse than others if past threats are to be believed – but we’ll see.
It’s been a risk off day in Europe, but the main indices recovered some earlier losses in late dealing.
The FTSE 100 closed just 0.3% down, while the DAX in Germany was 0.7% lower.
Values picked up as shares across the Atlantic turned positive – but only just.
A feeling reported by analysts is that there is some value to be had after the turmoil of the past few weeks, but sentiment could sour very quickly if the tariff regime is more punitive than expected.
A senior White House official says Donald Trump has told his cabinet members that Elon Musk will leave his government role in the coming months.
Musk has been working as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. He has drawn criticism over his efforts to downsize the US federal government, dismantling entire agencies and firing tens of thousands of workers from their jobs.
Musk currently has special status as a “special government employee” which temporarily exempts him from some ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. That 130-day period is expected to expire in late May or early June.
One senior administration official told our US partner network NBC News that Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an adviser and continue to be an occasional face around the White House grounds.
Trump hinted on Monday that Musk would have to go back to his businesses “at some point”.
“I think he’s amazing, but I also think he’s got a big company to run and so at some point he’s going to be going back,” Trump said.
“He wants to. I’d keep him as long as I could keep him.”
Mexico doesn’t plan to impose retaliatory tariffs on the US, its president has announced.
Instead, Claudia Sheinbaum said her country will tomorrow “announce a comprehensive program, not a tit-for-tat on tariffs.”
“It’s not a question of ‘if you impose tariffs on me, I’m going to impose tariffs on you’,” she said. “Our interest is in strengthening the Mexican economy.”
Trump has placed 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico twice since January but agreed to one-month pauses on both occasions following talks with Sheinbaum.
The guest list for Trump’s Rose Garden tariffs announcement later today will include a host of blue collar workers.
According to a senior White House official, guests will include “steelworkers, autoworkers, oil and gas workers, steam fitters, truck drivers, and hardworking Americans from a variety of trades”.
As a reminder, Trump implemented a 25% tariff on all cars coming into the US from today.
The head of the United Auto Workers, an American union representing workers in the car, aerospace and metal industries, says those tariffs are a victory for autoworkers.
By James Sillars, business and economics reporter
I was watching the US market screens as trading began on Wall Street.
There was a sea of red.
There is an air of inevitability circling investors now as the clock ticks down to 9pm UK time, when Donald Trump is due to reveal his “liberation day” tariff plans for the world.
There’s enough speculation, some of it informed, elsewhere on exactly what they will entail – but jitters over the impact the duties will have are being felt globally.
The main threat, as US investors see it, is that higher import duties will only hit sales, margins and profits.
It was the tech-heavy Nasdaq that felt the worst of the pain in early trading, falling more than 1.3%, though all three main indexes were lower – matching falls in Europe earlier.
Among the US firms suffering was Tesla.
Its stock fell almost 6% after sales figures covering the first quarter of the year disappointed.
A 13% decline to 336,681 vehicles was worse than many analysts had expected.
While some of that can be explained by a backlash against Elon Musk over his controversial role in the Trump administration, sales in Germany have been particularly weak since his intervention in February’s German elections, in which he urged voters to back the far-right AfD.
By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
For Donald Trump it’s “Liberation Day”, for allies it could be the end of an era. A period of mutually fostered prosperity is, it seems, coming to a close.
They are asking if the America we knew is gone for good?
Some are making up their minds already.
Canada’s new leader Mark Carney was not mincing his words this week. America had changed so much under Trump, he said, their relationship that had been “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over”.
Europe’s central banker Christine Lagarde said on Monday Trump’s tariffs mean the continent must begin a “march for independence”.
Transatlantic partners who have prospered for decades through mutual dependence are filing for divorce.
Others, like Britain’s Keir Starmer, are holding out hope there is enough of a relationship still worth having.
Trade war is ‘in nobody’s interests’, Starmer says
For all of America’s friends and allies, there a few key questions.
Is that it now, will Trump go on wreaking havoc on the world order for the next four years? It seems likely.
Unlike his first presidency, this is Trump untethered.
No grown-ups saving him from his worst impulses – replaced this time by unquestioning loyalists.
No fears about his re-election chances. And so, no apparent concern about a tanking stock market or even the chances of recession.
Trump’s ambitions transcend those concerns, not least seeking retribution as he sees it for the way America’s been treated by allies.
Grievances that need redressing through his favourite instrument, tariffs.
Much depends on the way he wields them. Hopes his tariff threats are purely negotiating tactics seem increasingly forlorn.
Liberation Day will either usher in a glorious new era for American prosperity or very much the opposite.
Trump says it will re-shore America manufacturing and raise billions in revenue.
Most economists are sceptical. Doing that would take years anyway. Before then, they predict inflation and economic pain.
The economy is always what counts most when Americans come to vote. The price of eggs was famously a key issue in the last election.
If Liberation Day brings more such pain, Trump can expect to do badly in the mid-term elections.
What is Trump’s “Liberation Day”?
Political gravity may already be at work. Two by-elections in Florida yesterday may have been won by Republicans, but with support halved compared to levels last November.
And despite millions thrown at it by Trump’s campaign financier in chief, Elon Musk, a judicial contest in Wisconsin went against him.
At town hall meetings up and down the country, Republican members of congress have been on the sharp end of voter discontent, booed and jeered to the rafters.
In public, Republicans remain unswervingly loyal to the president. In private, they must be worrying what MAGA will do to their electoral margins come 2026.
Will that deter Trump? Probably not.
He has a mandate from the American people and he believes from God, who he says saved him to make America great again. And he has a mission to do that his way.
He is even now openly discussing a third term against all the rules of the US constitution.
America as a reliable partner, the bulwark of the West is – it seems, for now, at least – history.
Allies and all of us need to prepare for a different future.
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