By Anjali Sharma
Washington – US President Donald Trump on Saturday said China had “panicked” by retaliating to his reciprocal tariff with a matching levy of 34 per cent on all imported goods from America.
Market turmoil deepened on news of China’s retaliation. All major US indexes dropped more than 3 per cent in morning trading, media reported.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had fallen by 4 per cent, and the Wall Street Journal said, it was on pace to close in a bear market, meaning it has fallen more than 20 per cent from a recent peak.
Trump announced a 34 per cent tariff on imports from China along with levies on all of America’s trading partner countries, including India with 26 per cent.
A base-line rate of 10 per cent has been levied on all trading partner countries with some of them such as China, India, Japan, the EU and others, were hit with higher rates.
Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform that “China played it wrong, they panicked the one thing they cannot afford to do!”.
The unsaid implication seemingly was that the president either expected or preferred that Beijing had chosen negotiation over retaliation.
“Well, it depends,” he said in response to a question from a reporter on Thursday if he was open to negotiations.
“If somebody said that we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal, as long as they’re giving us something, that’s good.”
He said “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. I’ve always used them very well in the first administration, as you saw, but now we’re taking it to a whole new level, because it’s a worldwide situation, and it’s very exciting to see.”
But his position seemed at odds with his top aides, who have said these tariffs are not negotiable.
Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce and a key architect of the president’s tariffs said “I don’t think there’s any chance that President Trump’s going to back off his tariffs.”
“The world should stop exploiting the United States of America.”
Peter Navarro top trade aide told a media outlet the tariffs are “not a negotiation”.
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