{"id":316,"date":"2025-04-25T17:55:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T17:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soapandseife.com\/?p=316"},"modified":"2025-04-26T23:33:54","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T23:33:54","slug":"trump-keeps-contradicting-himself-on-tariffs-making-a-fragile-world-economy-nervous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soapandseife.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/trump-keeps-contradicting-himself-on-tariffs-making-a-fragile-world-economy-nervous\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump keeps contradicting himself on tariffs, making a fragile world economy nervous"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JOSH BOAK<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump can’t stop contradicting himself on\u00a0his own tariff plans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He says he’s on a path to cut several new trade deals in a few weeks \u2014 but has also suggested it’s\u00a0\u201cphysically impossible”<\/a>\u00a0to hold all the needed meetings.<\/p>\n

Trump has said he will simply set new tariff rates negotiated internally within the U.S. government over the next few weeks \u2014 although he already did that on his April 2\u00a0\u201cLiberation Day,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which\u00a0caused the world economy to shudder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Republican president says he’s actively negotiating with the Chinese government on tariffs \u2014 while the Chinese and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have said\u00a0talks have yet to start<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What should one believe? The sure bet is that uncertainty will persist in ways that employers and consumers alike expect to damage the economy and that leave foreign leaders scratching their heads in bewilderment.<\/p>\n

And the consequences of all this tariffs turmoil are enormous.<\/p>\n

Trump placed\u00a0tariffs totaling 145%<\/a>\u00a0on China, leading China to retaliate with tariffs of 125% on the U.S. \u2014 essentially triggering a trade war between the world’s two largest economies with the potential to bring on\u00a0a recession<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump’s negotiating trade deals with himself<\/h4>\n

The president told Time magazine in an interview released Friday that 20%, 30% or 50% tariffs a year from now would be a \u201ctotal victory,\u201d even though a financial market panic led him to\u00a0temporarily reduce his baseline import taxes to 10% for 90 days<\/a>\u00a0while talks take place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deal is a deal that I choose,\u201d Trump said in the interview. \u201cWhat I\u2019m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that is confusing for the nation’s trading partners, it’s also sowing anxiety at home.<\/p>\n

The Federal Reserve\u2019s beige book<\/a>, a compilation of anecdotes from U.S. businesses prepared eight times a year, on Wednesday reported a huge spike in uncertainty among American companies that has caused them to pull back on hiring and investment in new projects. The word \u201cuncertainty\u201d cropped up 80 times, compared with 45 in early March and just 14 in January.<\/p>\n

Beyond the idea that Trump plans to keep some level of tariffs in place, the world finance ministers and corporate executives who gathered this past week in Washington for\u00a0the International Monetary Fund conference<\/a>\u00a0said in private discussions that the Trump administration was providing no real clarity on its goals for substantive talks.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s not a coherent strategy at the moment on what the tariffs are supposed to achieve,” said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the GeoEconomics Center at The Atlantic Council. \u201cMy conversations with the ministers and governors this week at the IMF meetings have been they don\u2019t understand completely what the White House wants, nor who they should be negotiating with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other countries trying to get talks going<\/h4>\n

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, in an interview with broadcaster SRF released Friday, said after a meeting with Bessent that Switzerland would be one of 15 countries with which the United States plans to conduct \u201cprivileged\u201d negotiations. But she said a memorandum of understanding would have to be reached for talks to formally begin.<\/p>\n

She was happy to at least know whom to talk to, saying that \u201cwe have also been assigned a specific contact person. This is not easy in the U.S. administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nations are deploying various negotiating tactics.<\/p>\n