Shorouk Express
Less than a day after American stock markets had their worst one-day performance in years as a result of President Donald Trump’s continued push to raise import taxes on goods from America’s biggest trading partners, Trump said he was doubling down on tariffs he has already placed on aluminum and steel imports from Canada.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he was ordering the 25 percent tax he has already imposed on any imported aluminum or steel from Canada to be raised to a 50 percent tax — one that will be paid by importers and likely passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Trump added that the additional taxes will go into effect “tomorrow morning” in retaliation for a 25 percent surcharge that Canadian electricity exporters are placing on power that is provided to customers in a group of American states using the shared energy grid between the U.S. and Canada.
“I will shortly be declaring a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area. This will allow the U.S to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada,” Trump wrote.
He also demanded that Canada drop a host of longstanding trade barriers, including one on dairy products, and threatened to charge Americans higher import taxes on cars and car parts that are entirely or partially made in Canada starting on April 2.
Trump said the tariffs, which would be paid by Americans who purchase cars, would “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada” and claimed that the cars in question, which are built and sold by American firms including General Motors, “can easily be made in the U.S.A.”
The tax increases on imports from one of America’s largest trading partners are the latest in a series of levies the president has announced in recent weeks as he has, without provocation, instigated a trade war with a longtime ally that has roiled financial markets and sent America’s economy hurtling downwards towards what economist say could be a crippling — and entirely self-inflicted — recession.
Investor concerns over the possible repercussions of the president’s chaotic tariff war with Canada, Mexico and China sent the stock market spiraling on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing with a near-record loss of 890 points and the Nasdaq average falling by 4.2 percent — the single worst one-day drop since September 2022. The Standard and Poor 500 index also fell precipitously with a closing point below the index’s 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2023.
The sell-off continued early on Tuesday in Asian markets as investors around the world grappled with Trump’s erratic manoeuvres and his indication during a weekend interview with Fox News that the U.S. economy could be in for a recession.
White House and administration officials have dismissed the rapid stock slides as unpleasant but necessary consequences of what they say is Trump’s push to remake the American economy by re-industrializing and rolling back decades of global economic integration.
One such official said Monday that the administration was “seeing a strong divergence between animal spirits of the stock market and what we’re actually seeing unfold from businesses and business leaders,” with the latter remaining supportive of Trump’s efforts in the official’s rendering of events.
“The latter is obviously more meaningful than the former on what’s in store for the economy in the medium to long term,” the official said.
A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, downplayed the stock market slump in a statement to reporters in which he stressed that business leaders “have responded to President Trump’s America First economic agenda of tariffs, deregulation, and the unleashing of American energy with trillions in investment commitments that will create thousands of new jobs” since Trump took office in January.
Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed the downturn was a “natural adjustment” as the Trump administration pushes the nation “away from public spending to private spending” and claimed that the American economy had “become hooked, become addicted, to excessive government spending.”
“There’s going to be a detox period,” he added.
The president is set to address leaders at the Business Roundtable later in the day on Tuesday.
