TikTok deal put on hold after China objects over tariffs, sources say

“A deal to spin off the U.S. assets of TikTok was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve the deal following President Donald Trump’s tariffs announcement this week, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Trump on Friday extended by 75 days a deadline for ByteDance to sell U.S. assets of the popular short video app to a non-Chinese buyer, or face a ban that was supposed to have taken effect in January under a 2024 law.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-tiktok-sale-deadline-looms-141008550.html

Will Trump’s tariffs cause global economic crash? | Robert Kaplan | Fourcast

‘Trump is post-literate, meaning he can use social media, but doesn’t read books. He doesn’t understand the origin, history, and nature of the Western alliance because he hasn’t taken the time to understand it. That would require reading.’

Trump doesn’t understand complex global supply chains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otuT90ffpA0

Trump’s tariffs a symptom of “economic illiteracy” says prof

The U.S. is dependent on Canada for electricity. This is a huge vulnerability in a trade war.

The U.S. won’t be able to compete with China on manufactured exports because tariffs will make all our goods too expensive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__qozWvbGn0

‘We’re really not taking it anymore’: Trump levies tariffs he’s wanted since the 80s

““I’ve been talking about it for 40 years, because I saw what was happening,” he said, referencing old interviews from when he was “young, very handsome.”

“I’d be talking about how we were being ripped off by these countries,” he continued. “I mean, nothing changes very much. The only thing to change was the countries, but nothing really changes.””

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/trump-levies-tariffs-00267650

Sweeping US tariffs hit some tiny targets around the world

“The list of 185 places hit Wednesday with a minimum 10 percent tariff include Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, Australian territories in the vast Indian Ocean between Africa and Antarctica.

Also on the list are tiny Norfolk Island in the South Pacific and an uninhabited spot in the Arctic Ocean called Jan Mayen, part of a Norwegian territory with the islands of Svalbard near the North Pole.

It’s all led to some head-scratching around the world as leaders digest Trump’s effort to punish countries that he says have taken advantage of U.S. trade policy to steal American jobs.”

“The country that received the most severe tariffs, Lesotho, is one that “nobody had ever heard of,” according to Trump. The White House list said the landlocked African kingdom has its own tariffs of 99 percent — and thus will face a 50 percent penalty from the U.S.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/us-tariffs-around-the-world-030348

Trump imposes 10 percent universal tariff, higher for top trade partners

“President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will impose a baseline 10 percent tariff on imports from all countries in the coming days, with a higher tariff on dozens of other countries the United States believes have the most unfair trade relationships with the U.S.”

“The tariffs that Trump detailed Wednesday mark the most significant U.S. protectionist trade action since the 1930s, when Congress imposed tariffs on more than 20,000 goods and dug the U.S. economy deeper into the Great Depression.”

“The new duties include a 34 percent tariff on China, 26 percent on India, 25 percent on South Korea, 24 percent on Japan and 20 percent on the 27-nation European Union, whose largest members are Germany and France.

The administration also slapped a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam and a 49 percent tariff on Cambodia — a blow to China, which has shipped goods through those and other countries to effectively skirt previous rounds of U.S. tariffs imposed over the past seven years.

That comes on top of a second executive order Trump signed Wednesday eliminating the “de minimis loophole” for small-dollar packages worth under $800 from China and Taiwan, starting on May 2. The loophole has been used by Chinese companies like SHEIN and Temu to deliver billions in goods to the U.S.”

“economists warn that the tariffs are almost certain to drive up prices for everyday goods imported from abroad — from fruits, vegetables and other food products to clothing, toys, cell phones, laptops, sporting equipment and countless other consumer products. The tariffs also will hit machinery and other manufactured goods, along with the raw materials and parts used to make things like cars and build houses in the United States.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/trump-tariff-trade-partners-liberation-day-00267350

Canada to retaliate against Trump with tariffs on US autos

“Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada will impose “carefully calibrated and targeted counter tariffs” on the United States in response to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Carney said Canada will counter with 25 percent tariffs on all vehicles imported from the United States that are not compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and on the non-Canadian content of USMCA-compliant vehicles from the United States.

But Carney said that unlike Trump’s tariffs, Canada’s countermeasures will not affect auto parts “because we know the benefits of our integrated production system.” All other previously announced Canadian countermeasures to Trump’s previous threats will remain, Carney said.

Carney said Trump’s global reciprocal tariffs have ended 80 years of American global economic leadership that started after World War II.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/03/canada-auto-tariffs-00269041

‘This Could Get Much Uglier’: The Fatal Flaw in Trump’s Trade War

“President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime will completely transform America’s economic relationship with the rest of the world, all in the name of revitalizing domestic manufacturing.
And yet, many businesses won’t be rushing to shift their supply chains to U.S. shores.

For all the detail in Trump’s Wednesday announcement, his endgame is still shrouded in confusion. That’s lethal for long-term investment, making confident planning all but impossible.”

“I’ve asked multiple corporate executives in recent weeks whether companies are likely to start investing in manufacturing in the United States in response to Trump’s policies, and the message has basically been: That’s an unanswerable question right now. Because making those decisions requires understanding the relative costs of doing it versus not doing it, and Trump is far too unpredictable to allow for that kind of calculation.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/03/trump-tariffs-manufacturing-confusion-00267945

Why Economic Sanctions Against Iran Are Backfiring

“Although the United States has the power to seriously disrupt economic life in other countries, the book argues, the consequences don’t always serve American interests. Sanctions hurt the prosperity and political standing of Iran’s pro-American middle class the most. They also make the government more paranoid and remove important incentives to play nice. Everyone seems worse off.

The U.S. has tried to wash its hands of the policy’s consequences for ordinary Iranians, blaming their poverty on domestic “corruption and economic mismanagement” rather than on sanctions. But the data are clear. The Iranian economy was booming from 1988, the end of the country’s war with Iraq, to 2011, the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s intensified sanctions campaign.

Obama’s innovation was secondary sanctions. As the flow of direct American-Iranian trade shrunk, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control punished companies in other countries that dealt with Iran. The Iranian economy became more or less radioactive, as any bank in the world that handled Iranian money and any shipping company that handled Iranian oil risked the wrath of the U.S. government.

Then Obama made a deal, lifting the sanctions in 2015 in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Trade resumed and foreign investment flowed back in—until Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018. (Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, former President Joe Biden continued to enforce the same sanctions.) Iran has since come closer to building a nuclear bomb, and it has had more confrontations with the U.S. military.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/27/how-sanctions-backfire/