Trump keeps contradicting himself on tariffs, making a fragile world economy nervous

By JOSH BOAK WASHINGTON AP President Donald Trump can t stop contradicting himself on his own tariff plans He says he s on a path to cut several new commerce deals in a sparse weeks but has also suggested it s physically impossible to hold all the needed meetings Trump has noted he will merely set new tariff rates negotiated internally within the U S cabinet over the next limited weeks although he already did that on his April Liberation Day which caused the world business activity to shudder The Republican president says he s actively negotiating with the Chinese authorities on tariffs while the Chinese and U S Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have mentioned talks have yet to start What should one believe The sure bet is that uncertainty will persist in approaches that employers and consumers alike expect to damage the financial system and that leave foreign leaders scratching their heads in bewilderment And the consequences of all this tariffs turmoil are enormous Trump placed tariffs totaling on China leading China to retaliate with tariffs of on the U S essentially triggering a exchange war between the world s two largest economies with the probable to bring on a recession Trump s negotiating arrangement deals with himself The president reported Time magazine in an interview published Friday that or tariffs a year from now would be a total accomplishment even though a financial area panic led him to temporarily reduce his baseline import taxes to for days while talks take place The deal is a deal that I choose Trump mentioned in the interview What I m 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 If that is confusing for the nation s trading partners it s also sowing anxiety at home Related Articles Environmental groups fear Trump s order to speed deep-sea mining will harm ecosystems How the residents s shift on immigration paved the way for Trump s crackdown Talk of raising taxes on millionaires swirls as Republicans draft Trump s big beautiful bill Donald Trump s trip to Pope Francis funeral puts a sharper focus on their clashes over the years US to loosen rules on Tesla other carmakers taking on China in race for self-driving cars The Federal Reserve s beige book a compilation of anecdotes from U S businesses prepared eight times a year on Wednesday stated a huge spike in uncertainty among American companies that has caused them to pull back on hiring and financing in new projects The word uncertainty cropped up times compared with in early March and just in January Beyond the idea that Trump plans to keep several level of tariffs in place the world finance ministers and corporate executives who gathered this past week in Washington for the International Monetary Fund conference announced in private discussions that the Trump administration was providing no real clarity on its goals for substantive talks There s not a coherent strategy at the moment on what the tariffs are supposed to achieve noted Josh Lipsky senior director of the GeoEconomics Center at The Atlantic Council My conversations with the ministers and governors this week at the IMF meetings have been they don t understand absolutely what the White House wants nor who they should be negotiating with Other countries trying to get talks going Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter in an interview with broadcaster SRF disclosed Friday reported after a meeting with Bessent that Switzerland would be one of countries with which the United States plans to conduct privileged negotiations But she disclosed a memorandum of understanding would have to be reached for talks to formally begin She was happy to at least know whom to talk to saying that we have also been assigned a specific contact person This is not easy in the U S administration Nations are deploying various negotiating tactics The South Korean personnel who met with their U S counterparts this week say they specifically requested for the tariffs to be lifted with the goal of working toward an agreement by July The European Union has pushed for cutting tariffs to zero for both parties though Trump objects to European countries charging a value-added tax which is akin to a sales tax that he says hurts U S goods Trump continues to radiate optimism that negotiated deals with other countries will occur despite his alleges that he will set his own deals and a lack of clarity about how the process goes forward I m getting along very well with Japan Trump explained reporters on Friday We re very close to a deal As part of a deal with Japan the Trump administration has publicly called on the Japanese executive to change its auto safety standards that put a greater focus on pedestrian safety But the steering wheels on autos sold in Japan are on the right-hand side while U S automakers put their steering wheels on the left I don t think left-hand drive cars sell in Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba explained a parliamentary session this week We want to make sure we aren t seen as being unfair Ishiba disclosed suggesting a possibility of reviewing Japanese car safety standards Higher prices and shortages are likely As Trump continues to make conflicting statements about tariffs companies are actively looking at higher prices lower sales and possibly bare shelves in stores due to fewer shipments from China Ryan Petersen CEO of Flexport a supply chain company noted on the social media site X In the weeks since the tariffs took effect ocean container bookings from China to the United States are down over industry wide Consumers are getting notices via email and social media from retailers that lamps furniture and other housewares will now include tariff-related charges The showerhead company Afina on Wednesday broadcasted on a test to see if people would buy an American-made product that cost more than an import Their Chinese-made filtered showerhead retails for but to manufacture the same product domestically would take the price up to When customers on the company s website were given a choice between a showerhead made in the USA or a cheaper one made in Asia there were purchases of the model made abroad and not one sale of the domestically produced showerhead Ramon van Meer Afina s founder concluded in his written analysis If policymakers and pundits want to rebuild American industry they need to grapple with this truth idealism doesn t inevitably survive contact with a price tag AP economics writer Christopher Rugaber in Washington and AP writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this account