President Trump threatened to revive his global trade wars on Friday, adding a fresh dose of chaos to trade relationships that had calmed somewhat in recent weeks.
The president had focused his attention on a trip to the Middle East and a tax bill on Capitol Hill. But on Friday, Mr. Trump returned to tariffs, saying he would apply a steep tax to European exports starting in just over a week and warning Apple and other phone manufacturers that their products made outside the United States would face a 25 percent tariff, most likely beginning next month.
The threats caused stocks to sink and renewed risks to the global economy, as similar announcements made by the president have in recent months. If enacted, economists said, the tariffs would pose significant costs for Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, and rupture U.S. trade with the European Union, the largest trading relationship in the world by some measures.
The president wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning that discussions with the European Union “are going nowhere” and that he was recommending a 50 percent tariff on European imports as of June 1.
“The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” Mr. Trump wrote. He claimed the bloc’s trade barriers, taxes, corporate penalties and other policies had contributed to a trade imbalance with the United States that was “totally unacceptable.”
In an earlier social media post, the president also targeted Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, who visited Mr. Trump at the White House this week. The president wrote that iPhones sold in the United States should be “manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.”
