What’s happened so farpublished at 00:57 British Summer Time 8 April
Sakshi Venkatraman
Reporting from New York
Watch: Three things to know about Trump’s tariffs announcement
On April 2, US President Donald Trump unveiled a slew of aggressive tariffs on imports from nearly every country in the world, sending shockwaves through global markets.
He targeted all countries with a standard 10% tariff, but for some of America’s biggest trading partners, that number went much higher.
China was hit with a 54% tariff, for example (although this included some earlier tariffs Trump had ordered).
What followed was the worst week the global stock market has experienced since the Covid pandemic.
The three major US indexes slumped, falling more than 5%. Some Asian stocks are having their worst drop in decades.
World leaders are now scrambling to respond, with some now negotiating with Trump to lower their rates. Others, like China, are imposing their own retaliatory levies on the US.
Trump has continued to defend the tariffs, saying on Sunday, “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”.
