Trump reverses tariff hikes for most countries, except China
Trump announced countries that had not retaliated against US tariffs would receive a 90-day reprieve and only face a blanket tariff of 10%. But he hiked the tariff on Chinese imports to 125% from the previous 104%.
In an extraordinary U-turn after days of claiming that his sweeping worldwide tariffs were here to stay, US President Donald Trump shelved plans to hike tariffs on most countries, pulling back from days of market mayhem and a potential global trade war amid warnings of dire consequences for the US economy.
But Trump doubled down on his trade war with one country — China — escalating America’s economic confrontation with the world’s second-largest economy by slapping further tariffs on Beijing that have now cumulatively risen to a whopping 125%.
As for the rest of the world, Trump announced countries that had not retaliated against US tariffs would receive a 90-day reprieve and only face a blanket US tariff of 10%.
According to reporting by CNN and The New York Times, the turmoil in the bond market convinced the US president to make this stunning reversal after insisting days earlier that his policies would never change.
“The bond market is very tricky, I was watching it,” Trump said, after his latest announcement, seemingly indicating that the troubling surge in US government bond yields was playing on his mind. “The bond market right now is beautiful. But yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.”
Trump’s turnabout came after the most dramatic episode of financial market volatility the world has seen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, erasing trillions of dollars from stock markets.
But the US president has refused to ease the pressure on China, saying he would hike the tariff on Chinese imports to 125% from the previous 104% level, after China announced additional retaliatory tariffs against the US of its own. The two countries have slapped higher and higher tariff hikes against each other in a tit-for-tat since Trump first imposed wide-ranging tariffs against most countries, including China, on April 2.
“At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” Trump wrote in a social media post.
Meanwhile, the head of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has warned that the trade war between the US and China “could severely damage the global economic outlook” and trigger “potential fragmentation of global trade along geopolitical lines.”
Orignal Article: https://evertiq.com/news/2025-04-10-trump-reverses-tariff-hikes-for-most-countries-except-china
