Tariffs live: Global markets brace as US confirms China to be hit with 104% levies overnight

As the US president coins a new term for the growing army of critics speaking out about his tariffs policy, Sean O’Grady says that ‘Panicans’ everywhere should rise up and wear the label with pride – ideally, on red baseball caps.

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The S&P 500 closed down below 5,000 for the first time in almost a year on Tuesday.

Stocks tumbled at their fastest pace since the pandemic in the last three days, but investors showed some signs of hope early in the day that Donald Trump would soften his stance or postpone an April 9 deadline for tariffs.

However, investor hopes soon faded for any imminent US delays or concessions on tariffs ahead of a midnight deadline.

Market participants “were optimistic this morning that we would get some sort of sign that we’re moving closer to a deal or a compromise with some of these bigger countries or that there would be a delay coming given that so many people wanted to negotiate,” said Lindsey Bell, chief market strategist at Clearnomics in New York.

“That doesn’t seem to necessarily be the case as we are quickly approaching the midnight deadline and investors are losing confidence.”

As commentators liken Donald Trump’s new tariffs policy to the disastrous mini-Budget that sparked her own downfall after just 49 days at Downing Street, Liz Truss has sought to blame the Canadian prime minister for causing the economic meltdown which defined her historically short period in office.

In an interview with conservative American commentator Glenn Beck, Ms Truss said she was “puzzled” that the former central banker had been picked as leader of Canada’s Liberal Party.

The former prime minister said Mark Carney “did a terrible job” as governor of the Bank of England between 2013 and 2020 and “created a lot of the problems that blew up on my watch and that I got blamed for.”

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres has said that he is particularly worried about the most vulnerable developing countries in a trade war unleashed by Donald Trump’s tariffs – warning that the impact would be “more devastating”.

“Trade wars are extremely negative. Nobody wins with a trade war, everybody tends to lose,” Mr Guterres told reporters.

Rebuilding relations with the European Union will be key to protecting Britain’s national interest during the “very turbulent” global economic headwinds unleashed by Donald Trump’s tariffs, a government minister has said.

Health minister Stephen Kinnock told Sky News’s Politics Hub: “It is very turbulent. Nobody benefits from a trade war. We live in an incredibly deeply integrated global economy with very integrated supply chains and hugely interdependent commercial relationships, so nobody benefits from a trade war.

“We are seeing a prime minister who is really showing leadership, he is engaging with Donald Trump and seeking to negotiate the best possible deal that we can in terms of economic prosperity.

“He’s also rebuilding the bridges that were burned by previous Conservative governments in terms of our relationship with the European Union.

“And we’re also developing an industrial strategy to help Britain stand firmly on its own two feet, investing in our own industries, boosting domestic demand, investing in skills in infrastructure rebuilding our manufacturing sector.

“So I think the combination of those three things is going to help us to weather the storm.”

In his latest column, The Independent’s chief business commentator James Moore writes:

At times like these, any port in a storm will do. In the modelling and role-playing currently underway around the globe, the UK suffers in Donald Trump’s trade war, like everyone else. But, cross fingers and toes, things might turn out to not be so bad here as elsewhere.

The reasons for this are laced with irony. Britain is not in the EU any more, thanks to Brexit, so the hit from the White House is reduced. They’re being clobbered with 20 per cent, the British penalty is 10 per cent. That is a sizeable difference.

So, exiting the EU, which has damaged the UK economy, has come good in the end. That, at least, is the Brexiteer interpretation of events. They ignore the first part and focus on the second. They prefer not to dwell on the fact that businesses miss the customs bloc terribly, that companies would dearly love to return to the free movement of goods and people.

Still, let us concentrate on this unexpected “Brexit dividend”, and give thanks.

The White House is attempting to paper over an ugly online spat between two of Donald Trump’s close confidantes over the tariff policies that have roiled stock markets and disturbed investors over the last six days as Trump himself is doubling down on increasing the taxes Americans will pay on Chinese imports.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday dismissed an online war of words between Tesla and SpaceX chief executive turned White House adviser Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, the longtime Trump aide and China hawk who has pressed Trump to tax Americans as a way of punishing foreign countries for trade deficits that are the result of market forces and decades-long trends in globalization of supply chains.

The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg has the full story:

The availability of around 85 per cent of NHS medicines could be at risk unless the UK government strengthens its supply chains to prepare for worsening geopolitical tensions, ministers have been warned.

Manufacturers in Britain have urged the government to treat it as a defence issue, with the supply of drugs such as antibiotics under threat if global tensions continue to rise as a result of Donald Trump’s decision to ramp up tariffs across the world.

If pharmaceutical and medical suppliers are hit by a US-led tariff war, the NHS could have to pay more for medicines, another expert has said.

Donald Trump believes that China has to make a deal with the United States concerning additional tariffs that are set to go into effect on Wednesday, the White House press secretary has said.

“The Chinese want to make a deal. They just don’t know how to do it,” Karoline Leavitt told a news briefing on Tuesday.

“He believes China has to make a deal with the United States.”

If China reaches out, she added, Trump would be “incredibly gracious, but he’s going to do what’s best for the American people.”