Yesterday, US markets suffered their biggest one-day percentage losses since 2020 after Donald Trump announced widespread global tariffs would be introduced on 9 April.
A tariff is effectively a tax on imported goods – the US has been on the wrong end of these for decades and Trump’s hope is that his policy will encourage companies to manufacture inside the US and thus “make America wealthy again”.
But the scale of Trump’s actions threatens to drive up prices in the US and has already caused chaos in the global economy.
European and Asian markets have suffered notable falls – but the US was worst hit with £2.4trn wiped off the value of its biggest companies.
Household names such as Dell, Apple and Ralph Lauren were among the big fallers.
Despite that, Trump said the markets are “going to boom”.
Governments around the world are broadly adopting two approaches – hitting back with counter tariffs, or waiting to see how this settles.
