As markets plummeted around the world Thursday following President Donald Trump’s announcement of wide-ranging global tariffs, Trump predicted the U.S. markets and the country itself “are going to boom” as a result of his trade policies.
China announced Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10, part of a flurry of retaliatory measures following U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” slate of double-digit tariffs.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said he will offer the “greatest support” to industries impacted by the new tariffs. Lai acknowledged that Taiwan had a trade surplus with the U.S., but that much of it came from Taiwanese industries trying to fulfill the U.S. demand for Taiwan’s information technology products.
“We feel that this is unreasonable and are also worried about the subsequent impact these measures may have on the global economy,” Lai said in a statement on his Facebook page Thursday night.
Lai said he instructed Premier Cho Jung-tai to work closely with industries that are impacted and to communicate with the public about their plans to stabilize the economy.
The president does not have anything on his schedule during the day. At 7:30 p.m., he will attend a MAGA Inc. candlelit dinner at Mar-a-Lago, according to the White House.
Trump offered a rosy assessment after the stock market dropped sharply Thursday over his tariffs, saying, “I think it’s going very well.”
“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom,” he said when asked about the market as he left the White House to fly to one of his Florida golf clubs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 1,600 points on Thursday as U.S. stocks led a worldwide selloff.
Trump talked about trillions of dollars in investment that is “coming into our country” from companies that want to make their products in the U.S. to avoid tariffs.
“The rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal,” he said.
Later, speaking with the reporters on aboard Air Force One, Trump said that he’d be open to using tariffs to negotiate with other countries and that it would depend on whether they had something “phenomenal” to offer in return.
▶ Read more about Trump’s response to the market crash
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China announced Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10, part of a flurry of retaliatory measures following Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
The new tariff matches the rate of the U.S. “reciprocal” tariff of 34% on Chinese exports that Trump ordered this week.
The Commerce Ministry in Beijing also said in a notice that it will impose more export controls on rare earths, which are materials used in high-tech products such as computer chips and electric vehicle batteries.
Additionally, the Chinese government said it has added 27 firms to lists of companies subject to trade sanctions or export controls.
16 are subject to a ban on the export of “dual-use” goods. High Point Aerotechnologies, a defense tech company, and Universal Logistics Holding, a publicly traded transportation and logistics company, were among those listed.
Beijing also announced it filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over the tariffs issue.
▶ Read more about China’s retaliatory measures to Trump’s tariffs
Trump’s expansive new tariffs reverse a decades-long global trend of lower trade barriers and are likely, economists say, to raise prices for Americans by thousands of dollars each year while sharply slowing the U.S. economy.
A ship is docked with cargo as trucks are shown at The Port of Oakland in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Bronte Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
The White House is gambling that other countries will also suffer enough pain that they will open up their economies to more American exports, leading to negotiations that would reduce the tariffs imposed Wednesday.
Or, the White House hopes, companies will reverse their moves toward global supply chains and bring more production to the United States to avoid higher import taxes.
▶ Read more about the impact of Trump’s tariffs
