Follow the latest tariff news in our live blog
Donald Trump has claimed “tremendous progress” in his trade war as he ruled out any pause on tariffs.
He told reporters: “We are making tremendous progress with a lot of countries, and countries that really took advantage of us are now saying please negotiate because they’re getting beaten badly.”
It came on a brutal day for the world’s stock markets, with the FTSE 100 shedding 4.4pc and Wall Street’s S&P 500 dropping as much as 4.7pc during volatile trading.
In a press conference in the Oval Office with Benjamin Netanyahu, he defended his tariff hikes, saying: “It’s the only chance we’re going to get to reset the table on trade, and when we do we’re going to come out unbelievable well.
“We’re going to have a strong country economically again. And we’re going to have those factories that are empty all over the United States. We’ve lost 90,000 plants and factories [since 1994]”.
He singled out China for criticism, saying: “They’ve become a rich country … hundreds of billions of dollars a year they’ve made on trade and it shouldn’t be like that.”
“We have $36 trillion of debt for a reason,” he claimed.
But he talked up the scope for new trade deals. He said: “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us and they’re going to be fair deals.”
The comments came after a private meeting between Mr Trump and the Benjamin Netanyahu, which the US president described as “great discussions”.
The Israeli premier said: “We will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States … very quickly.”
