May 1, 2026

Trump Tariffs

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If you are confused about the government‘s tariff policy, don’t worry. You are not alone. Confusion is not your fault. Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump has flipped back and forth on tariffs while offering different explanations for current policy and different predictions for future policy.

There are many components to successful leadership, but an important one is communicating to constituents what your policies are, why they are needed, and how they will work. Trump has not done this for his tariffs. As a result, the economy is suffering, and voters are beginning to blame the president for their pain. Until Trump is able to deliver stability or clarity on this matter, the economic pain will continue for everyone, and the political pain for Trump and the Republican Party will worsen.

On his first day in office, Trump announced a 25% tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on all goods from China starting Feb. 1. On Feb. 1, Trump reannounced the tariffs but pushed the start date to Feb. 4. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced a 30-day delay for the Canada and Mexico tariffs but started the China tariffs.

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President Donald Trump has clarified that electronics are not exempt from his new tariffs, warning that “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook.’”

The warning comes as Trump redoubled his promise to end “unfair” trade policies once and for all.

The president confirmed that America’s trading partners are not “off the hook.”

The clarification came after his administration appeared to back away from targeting products like smartphones imported largely from China.

Trump’s reversal caused the stock market to rally Monday as confidence in tech stocks rebounded.

Companies like Apple are largely reliant on supply chains based in Asia, especially China.

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International travel to the United States fell 12% in March compared to rates from March 2024, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office.

From January to March, 7.1 million visitors entered the U.S. from abroad, a 3.3% decline from the first three months of 2024. This marks the sharpest decrease in travel since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. tourism industry expected the year to be positive regarding travelers from abroad visiting the U.S. In 2024, the number of international visitors to the U.S. rose, with some forecasts predicting 2025 would reach pre-COVID levels.

Tourism Economics, a travel forecasting company, originally anticipated the U.S. would have nearly 9% more international arrivals this year but revised its annual outlook last week to a 9.4% decline.

But travel from overseas has nosedived for tourists upset by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and reports of dozens of tourists being arrested at the border.

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Nvidia on Monday announced it would design and build factories to produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the United States.

“Together with leading manufacturing partners, the company has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test NVIDIA Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas,” Nvidia announced.

Yahoo Finance reports:

As part of this $500 billion commitment, Nvidia said it is building two new supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas in partnership with contract manufacturers Foxconn (2354.TW) and Wistron (3231.TW).

Nvidia expects to mass-produce supercomputers at those sites in 12 to 15 months. The chipmaker said its latest Blackwell AI chips are already in production at TSMC’s (TSM) plant in Phoenix.

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A top boss in America’s largest auto union praised President Donald Trump for sticking to his guns amid a high-stakes international tariff war that he promises will bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

Despite endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris, the United Auto Workers have come solidly around to Trump since he began instituting sharp tariffs on other countries, which for decades have benefited from U.S. companies shifting their manufacturing and production lines overseas. The change “will bring work back” to his union members, UAW president Shawn Fain told a stunned MSNBC host on Monday.

“Now, we’ve been very clear,” Fain said. “We do believe, and we know, when it comes to auto, when it comes to heavy truck, and agricultural implementation, we know that tariffs will influence these companies to do the right thing and reinvest in this country and reinvest in factories in this country.”

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Thailand, along with the rest of Southeast Asia, got some temporary relief when the U.S. President Donald Trump chose to delay his “Liberation Day” tariffs by 90 days. Now, the country’s U.S.-bound exports only have a 10% tariff, as opposed to the 36% threatened by Trump.

Asian markets have gone on a wild ride since Trump first unveiled his reciprocal tariffs on April 2, falling and rising according to the president’s statements. Thailand’s benchmark SET index fell by 9% between April 2 and April 9, only to rally after Trump announced his tariff pause. Still, the index has yet to recover from the “Liberation Day” hit. 

“Reciprocal tariffs, we thought, were excessively high,” said Victor Cheng, the CEO of Delta Electronics Thailand, last week before Trump announced his tariff pause. 

U.S. actions were causing “anxiety and great concern,” Cheng said, but noted that customers had yet to change or cancel any orders due to the tariffs and were instead adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Cheng added later, after Trump paused his tariffs, that customers are using the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs to “stock up”.

The CEO also explained why his U.S. customers, and not his company, “will have to bear the extra tariff on top of the original selling price.” He points out that most of Delta Electronics Thailand’s products are classed as “free on board”, which means responsibility passes from the seller—his company—to the buyer—the U.S. customer.

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HANOI, Vietnam — China’s leader Xi Jinping started a week of diplomacy in Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam on Monday, signaling China’s commitment to global trade, just after U.S. President Donald Trump upended the global economy with his latest tariffs moves.

Although Trump has paused some tariffs, China was the outlier, as he has kept in place 145% tariffs on the world’s second-largest economy.

Xi’s visit this week lets China show Southeast Asia it is a “responsible superpower in the way that contrasts with the way the U.S. under President Donald Trump presents to the whole world,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

China also can work to shore up its alliances and find solutions for the high trade barrier that the U.S. has on Chinese exports.

“There are no winners in a trade war, or a tariff war,” Xi wrote in an editorial jointly published in Vietnamese and Chinese official media. “Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment.”

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Some Republican lawmakers are deeply concerned about President Donald Trump’s tariff gambit for more reasons than one. Many have argued that using tariffs will only raise prices for American consumers.

However, others are worried about something else: Maintaining political power.

The Hill reported that GOP lawmakers have expressed concerns that the trade wars’ impact might negatively impact their chances of retaining control over both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

Republican lawmakers say there’s a good chance that President Trump’s trade war will boomerang on Republicans politically in 2026, as rising prices and shrinking growth could offset other accomplishments by the GOP.

Republican senators are pointing to the 1932 and 1982 elections as historical examples of when trade wars and resulting price inflation hurt their party at the ballot box, and they are worried that history could repeat itself.

Many Republican lawmakers view tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers, and some note that the last two times Congress enacted tax hikes on the scale of Trump’s recent tariffs, the president’s party suffered a wipeout in the next election.

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HONG KONG — Shares slid further in Europe and Asia on Friday as markets shuddered while investors counted the potential costs of U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest set of tariffs.

The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.8% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1%.

Everything from crude oil to Big Tech stocks to the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies has fallen. Even gold, a traditional safe haven that recently hit record highs, pulled lower after Trump announced his “Liberation Day” set of tariffs, which economists say carries the risk of a potentially toxic mix of weakening economic growth and higher inflation.

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The growing policy uncertainty and weakening economic conditions alone may already be causing some of this to occur.

Since Trump took office, companies have canceled, delayed, or scaled back at least nine US “clean energy supply chain” developments or operations, according to the Big Green Machine, a database maintained by Jay Turner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, and student researchers there. The projects that have been affected represent some $8 billion in public and private investments, and more than 9,000 jobs.

They include KORE Power’s planned battery facility in Arizona, which the company halted; Envision Automotive Energy Supply’s paused expansion in Florence County, South Carolina; and Akasol’s closure of two plants in Michigan.

VW also scaled back production at its recently expanded EV factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, amid slower-than-expected growth in sales and, perhaps, the expectation that the Trump administration will strive to roll back consumer tax credits for vehicle purchases.

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Trump’s sweeping tariffs sent shockwaves through Wall Street, wiping about $3.1 trillion in market value in its largest one-day decline since the Covid pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 4 percent. The S&P 500 fell 4.8 percent.

And the tech-focused Nasdaq was down 6 percent — fuelled by declines from Apple, Nvidia and Amazon.

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The New York stock exchange has closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.

The S&P 500 index is down 4.9% at the close, which Reuters flags is the biggest one-day drop since June 2020.

The Dow has also posted its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, down 4%.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq tumbled 5.9%, its worst single-day performance since March 2020.

The scale of the sell-off, wiping trillions of dollars off the value of US companies, highlights just how alarmed investors are by the tariffs, and the fears they could lead to a recession.

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US President Donald Trump’s worldwide tariff salvo could lead to an overall contraction of around 1 percent in global merchandise trade volumes this year, the WTO chief warned Thursday.

After Trump on Wednesday unveiled a blitz of harsher-than-expected levies aimed at countries around the globe, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned the measures would “have substantial implications for global trade and economic growth prospects”.

Trump slapped 10 percent import duties on all nations and far higher levies on imports from dozens of specific countries — including top trade partners China and the European Union — adding to tariffs already imposed since his return to power in January.

“While the situation is rapidly evolving, our initial estimates suggest that these measures, coupled with those introduced since the beginning of the year, could lead to an overall contraction of around 1 percent in global merchandise trade volumes this year,” the World Trade Organization director-general said in a statement.