US commerce secretary: Trump ‘is not going to back off’ from tariff policies
The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said that there is no chance Donald Trump will back away from his tariffs which have sent shock waves across the global market.
“The president is not going to back off what he announced yesterday. He is not going to back off,” Lutnick said in an interview on CNN.
He added: “Let the dealmaker make his deals when and only if these countries can change everything about themselves, which I doubt they will.”
Key events
Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate agriculture committee, called the tariffs a “national sales tax” on consumers, farmers and businesses.
In a statement she said:
This is the biggest tax increase in a generation, and will increase costs by more than $5,000 a year for the average family. The economic chaos and uncertainty the president is creating is endangering our economy.
Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the House agriculture committee, said the tariffs would force American farms to close.
She said in a statement:
Increasing input costs, shutting farmers out of export markets and causing middle-class families to pay more at the grocery store is not a winning strategy. Starting trade wars puts family farmers in the crosshairs for retaliation.
The few positive reactions came from beef and seafood groups, who said they have been disadvantaged in the global market and see the tariffs as an opportunity for growth, Reuters reports.
John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, said:
We’ve watched as multi-generational family businesses tie up their boats, unable to compete with foreign producers who play by a completely different set of rules.
Ethan Lane, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s senior vice-president of government affairs, said in a statement:
America’s family farmers have been mistreated by certain trading partners around the world. President Trump is taking action to address numerous trade barriers that prevent consumers overseas from enjoying high-quality, wholesome American beef.
Groups that represent dairy processors and fresh produce growers and retailers said the tariffs risked higher prices for US consumers and smaller markets for farmers.
Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice-president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association, said in a statement:
Broad and prolonged tariffs on our top trading partners and growing markets will risk undermining our investments, raising costs for American businesses and consumers, and creating uncertainty for American dairy farmers and rural communities.
The International Fresh Produce Association said it appreciated that Trump exempted fruits and vegetables covered by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) from tariffs, but added that it was concerned about tariffs on other trading partners.
Cathy Burns, the CEO of the association, said in a statement:
The global trade of fresh produce is essential to the health and well-being of people in every nation.
Reuters has a helpful roundup of reaction from groups representing US farmers and food processors, most of which are sharply critical to Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports. I’ll start with farmer groups.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the leading farm lobby, said the tariffs threaten US farmers’ competitiveness and could cause long-term damage by eroding market share.
Zippy Duvall, the president of the group, said in a statement:
We share the administration’s goal of leveling the playing field with our international partners, but increased tariffs threaten the economic sustainability of farmers who have lost money on most major crops for the past three years.
The National Farmers Union also criticized the plan, saying it puts farmers at risk during a period of economic strain. Rob Larew, the NFU’s president, said in a statement.
One thing is certain: American family farmers and ranchers will bear the brunt of this global trade war. Without meaningful support and a commitment to fair trade policies, we will lose even more family farms, weaken rural economies, and ultimately drive up costs and limit choices for consumers at the grocery store.
Trump administration is ‘months away’ from direct payments to farmers, Rollins says
The US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said that the administration is “months away” from making a decision about whether to make payments to farmers to offset any impact from tariffs.
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs were mostly criticized by farm and food groups for their potential to shrink markets for farmers and raise prices for consumers.
Rollins told Fox News that the administration would consider making payments to farmers in the case of any economic hit from tariffs, but any decision was a long way off.
We are months, literally months away, from understanding if that’s going to be necessary.
It has been a majorly challenging few years for America’s agricultural sector and across the country, farming groups are in a spin over Trump’s tough tariff approach. Indeed, with 10% of all US workers employed in or adjacent to agriculture and around 20% of all US agricultural production going overseas, some agronomists fear the ructions caused by the Trump administration could put pay to relations that took decades to develop.
My colleague Stephanie Starr reported on that earlier this week:
The US is in talks to invest billions of dollars in mineral-rich Congo and wants to help end the conflict raging in the country’s east, Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa said during a visit on Thursday.
Democratic Republic of Congo, which has vast reserves of cobalt, lithium and uranium among other minerals, has been fighting Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who have seized swathes of its territory this year (you can read our coverage of the conflict here). The DRC, the US and other countries have said Rwanda is backing M23 to exploit the region’s mineral resources.
Meanwhile the US said last month that it is open to exploring critical minerals partnerships with Congo after a Congolese senator contacted US officials to pitch a minerals-for-security deal.
Reuters reports that US senior adviser Massad Boulos (who is Donald Trump’s daughter’s father-in-law) said after meeting Congo president Félix Tshisekedi in Kinshasa.
You have heard about a minerals agreement. We have reviewed the Congo’s proposal, and … the president and I have agreed on a path forward for its development.
The details of any potential deal, or Congo’s proposal, were not made public on Thursday.
Congo’s minerals, which are used in mobile phones and electric cars, are currently dominated by China and its mining companies.
How the US will operate in Congo is unclear, but Boulos suggested that US companies will be involved.
Rest assured, American companies are operating transparently and will stimulate local economies. These are multi-billion-dollar investments.
He added that the US wants to help forge peace in the east where thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced to flee amid M23’s advance, which has seen the group take over eastern Congo’s two largest cities.
We want a lasting peace that affirms the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the DRC. There can be no economic prosperity without security.
On the need to ramp up domestic production, Howard Lutnick said the US needs to produce its own steel, pharmaceuticals, weapons and aircraft. The commerce secretary told CNBC:
We can’t allow the United States of America to not produce steel. We can’t allow the United States of America to not produce pharmaceuticals. We can’t have a war where we can’t get antibiotics and we have to call another country to make a missile or to make a plane. I mean, these are obvious things. We need to have domestic production and we need to employ Americans.
Lutnick also claimed there would be the “greatest surge” in training for American workers to learn tradecrafts, such as operating robotics.
While Wall Street is in a state of flux with plunging stocks and a weakened dollar, Howard Lutnick doubled down on his assertion that Trump’s tariffs are still “going to drive growth”.
The commerce secretary told CNN that in the context of the US’s $30tn economy: “That’s a whole lot of growth. And you’re gonna get that starting in the fourth quarter.” (As I’m sure you’re aware, we’re currently three days into the second quarter.)
US commerce secretary: Trump ‘is not going to back off’ from tariff policies
The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said that there is no chance Donald Trump will back away from his tariffs which have sent shock waves across the global market.
“The president is not going to back off what he announced yesterday. He is not going to back off,” Lutnick said in an interview on CNN.
He added: “Let the dealmaker make his deals when and only if these countries can change everything about themselves, which I doubt they will.”
Ruben Gallego, a Democratic senator of Arizona, has joined a growing number of Democrats in criticizing Donald Trump’s tariff policy.
Replying to a Reuters headline about the automaker Stellantis, which said on Thursday it was temporarily laying off 900 workers at five US facilities after Trump’s tariffs were announced, Gallego wrote:
Heck of a job @POTUS.
Several officials within Donald Trump’s national security council have been fired, Axios reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
On Thursday, the outlet reported that the firings came a day after Laura Loomer, a staunch Trump ally and conspiracy theorist, visited the Oval Office and urged Trump to carry out the firings.
According to one source who spoke to Axios, the firings were “being labeled as an anti-neocon move”.
One official who spoke to Axios described Loomer’s visit, saying: “She went to the White House yesterday and presented them with her research and evidence.”
It remains unclear whether the reported firings and Loomer’s visit are related.
The latest report follows just weeks after the White House found itself in a scandal involving its national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who added the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg into a Signal group chat last month to discuss US strikes on Yemen.
Trump tariffs rates around the world – visual explainer
Here are some visual explainers of Donald Trump’s latest tariff policies and how they can affect US and global trade:
Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, has also hit back at Donald Trump’s newest tariff’s plan, saying:
“President Trump’s tariffs will raise prices on Pennsylvanians – including the tab at your local brewery. Even breweries who buy and source almost everything from the US, like @TheBrewWorks in Bethlehem, could see costs increase as a result of tariffs on the aluminum they use for their cans or the malt they use in their beer.”
In an earlier post on Thursday, Shapiro said that Trump’s tariffs “could cause real harm to Pennsylvania’s hardwood industry and the 60,000 Pennsylvanians who work in it”.
“I don’t know why he’s doing this – but I know we’re going to fight like hell for our farmers and our [agriculture] sector here in PA,” he added.
New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has joined other lawmakers in criticizing Donald Trump’s latest tariffs policy.
Writing on X in response to a news headline of US stocks falling including the Dow plunging 1,400 points and NASDAQ being down 5%, Hochul said on Thursday morning:
This is what Liberation Day looks like.
Stocks tumble on Wall Street following Trump’s tariffs reveal
Stocks have taken a sharp fall on Wall Street following Donald Trump’s latest tariffs reveal which has sent shock waves across the global market.
The Dow Jones industrial average, which tracks 30 of the largest US companies, promptly plunged by 1,137 points, or 2.7%, to 41,087 points, the Guardian’s Graeme Wearden reports.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg has calculated that approximately $1.7tn was erased from the S&P 500 Index at the start of today’s trading.
For more live updates on the state of global stocks, follow our business live blog here:
Vance: ‘we’re not going to fix things overnight’
Following widespread backlash to Donald Trump’s latest global tariffs reveal, JD Vance said in a new interview on Fox News: “What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we’re not going to fix things overnight.”
He added: “We know people are struggling, we’re fighting as quickly as we can to fix what was left to us but it’s not going to happen immediately.”
Vance also claimed that with the “right regulation”, Americans were “going to benefit from the fact that foreign countries can’t take advantage of us any more”, adding: “That means their jobs are going to be more secure.”