The tariff shock
The United States raises average tariffs to their highest level since the 1930s in an afternoon.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
On 2 April 2025 Trump announced tariffs on almost every trading partner, calculated from bilateral trade deficits rather than any measure of trade barriers, and including uninhabited islands. Equity markets lost about ten trillion dollars in four days and the Treasury market began to seize; most of the tariffs were paused for 90 days on 9 April. It was the sharpest reversal of the postwar trading order in eighty years.