By Douglas Gillison, Ben Blanchard and Sara Rossi
WASHINGTON/TAIPEI/VERONA, Italy (Reuters) -Greater than 50 nations have reached out to the White Home to start commerce talks since U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out sweeping new tariffs, high officers stated on Sunday as they defended levies that worn out practically $6 trillion in worth from U.S. shares final week and downplayed financial fallout.
On Sunday morning speak exhibits, Trump’s high financial advisers sought to painting the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the U.S. within the world commerce order. Additionally they tried to attenuate the financial shocks from final week’s tumultuous rollout, forward of Monday’s anticipated bumpy opening of Asian inventory markets.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated greater than 50 nations had began negotiations with the U.S. since final Wednesday’s announcement, placing Trump able of energy.
Neither Bessent nor the opposite officers named the international locations or supplied particulars concerning the talks. However concurrently negotiating with a number of international locations may pose a logistical problem for the Trump administration and lengthen financial uncertainty.
“He is created most leverage for himself,” Bessent stated on NBC Information’ ‘Meet the Press.’
Bessent downplayed the inventory market drop and stated there was “no cause” to anticipate a recession based mostly on the tariffs, citing stronger-than-anticipated U.S. jobs development.
Trump jolted economies around the globe after he introduced broad tariffs on U.S. imports, triggering retaliatory levies from China and sparking fears of a worldwide commerce battle and recession.
JPMorgan economists now estimate the tariffs will end in full-year U.S. gross home product declining by 0.3%, down from an earlier estimate of 1.3% development, and that the unemployment fee will climb to five.3% from 4.2% now.
As buyers girded for the opening of inventory markets in Asia, the Republican president spent the weekend in Florida, enjoying golf and posting a video of his swing to social media on Sunday.
TARIFF DEALMAKING
U.S. customs brokers started amassing Trump’s unilateral 10% tariff on all imports from many international locations on Saturday. Greater “reciprocal” tariff charges of 11% to 50% on particular person international locations are as a result of take impact on Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT (4:01 a.m. GMT).
Some nations have already signaled a willingness to interact with the U.S. to keep away from the duties.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te on Sunday supplied zero tariffs as the premise for talks with the U.S., pledging to take away commerce limitations and saying Taiwanese firms will increase their U.S. investments.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he would search a reprieve from a 17% tariff on the nation’s items throughout a deliberate assembly with Trump on Monday.
An Indian authorities official informed Reuters the nation doesn’t plan to retaliate in opposition to a 26% tariff and stated talks had been below approach with the U.S. over a doable deal.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – a Trump ally – pledged on Sunday to protect companies that suffered injury from a deliberate 20% tariff on items from the European Union.
Italian wine producers and U.S. importers at a wine honest in Verona on Sunday stated enterprise had already slowed and feared extra lasting injury.
NO STRATEGY TO TANK STOCK MARKET
Tariff-stunned markets face one other week of potential turmoil after the worst week for U.S. shares for the reason that onset of the COVID-19 disaster 5 years in the past.
The S&P 1500 Composite Index, among the many widest measures of the U.S. market, misplaced practically $6 trillion in worth within the two days after Trump’s announcement and has had virtually $10 trillion worn out since mid-February, a major blow to tens of millions of Individuals’ retirement nest eggs.
White Home financial adviser Kevin Hassett denied that the tariffs had been a part of a Trump technique to crash monetary markets to strain the U.S. Federal Reserve to chop rates of interest. He stated there can be no “political coercion” of the central financial institution.
In a Reality Social submit on Friday, Trump shared a video that prompt his tariffs aimed to hammer the inventory market on function in a bid to drive decrease rates of interest.
The social media submit fueled world debate over whether or not Trump’s tariffs had been a part of a everlasting new tariff regime or just a negotiating tactic that might result in the tariffs being eased by concessions by different international locations.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick prompt on CBS Information’ ‘Face the Nation’ that they could possibly be the latter, saying the tariffs would stay in place “for days and weeks.”
The method used to find out the tariffs got here below scrutiny final week after they had been utilized to uninhabited Antarctic islands populated by penguins and different tiny, distant locations.
Lutnick stated a complete method was wanted in order that small nations couldn’t be utilized by bigger international locations to avoid the tariffs.
“Principally (Trump) stated, ‘I am unable to let any a part of the world be a spot the place China or different international locations can ship by them,'” Lutnick stated.
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison, Ted Hesson, Kanishka Singh and Susan Heavey in Washington; Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Sara Rossi in Verona, Italy; Khanh Vu and Francesco Guarascio in Hanoi; and Shivangi Acharya and Aftab Ahmed in New Delhi; Writing by Ted Hesson; Modifying by Ross Colvin and Chizu Nomiyama)
