Name: Trump defends tariffs after stock market turmoil | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-04-07T14:22:37.000Z
Duration: 16 min 16 s
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We start with the continuing turmoil in the financial markets.

In the last hour, stock markets have opened in Europe.

The DAX in Frankfurt is down more than 6.5% currently.

The FTSE 100 down around 5% and the index in Paris down nearly 6% in early trading.

President Trump's tariffs are continuing to send shockwaves and fuel fears of a recession.

Now, stock markets across Asia have seen an absolute sea of red at one point in early trading.

The main market in Japan, the Nikkei, was down by nearly 9%.

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong is currently down more than 13% and the markets in South Korea and Taiwan have also fallen sharply into negative territory.

In China, investors have warned people to brace themselves for what they're calling Ugly Monday.

President Trump, for now, is ignoring the turmoil on the stock market.

Speaking on Air Force One, he said, sometimes you have to take medicine to fix the problem.

He insisted that jobs and investments were returning to the US.

What's going to happen with the market, I can't tell you, but I can tell you our country has gotten a lot stronger and eventually it will be a country like no other.

It will be the most dominant country economically in the world, which is what it should be.

Is there pain in the market at some point?

You're unwilling to tolerate this idea of a Trump put.

I don't want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.

We have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen.

Marika Oyanar, Asia Business Hub, has the latest from there.

It has been described by some analysts as even a financial bloodbath, as all we've been seeing all day was a sea of red arrows pointing downwards.

As you said, Japan's Nikkei has finished trading for the day down 7%, and it goes to show how this is a deeper sell-off than what we saw on Thursday and Friday, and that's because investors are growing increasingly concerned about the escalating global trade war and also the impact on the global economy because, of course, it was on Friday evening, our time, Asia time, when Beijing retaliated with that 34% tariffs on all American products entering China, which really escalated that fear of global trade war.

In terms of the impact on the global economy, I think we've been hearing from a lot of economists talking about these tariffs pushing up prices in the United States and pushing the US economy into a recession, but some are even worried that the global economy could fall into a recession as well.

And, of course, the impact on the global supply chain, as we've been talking about it, that's something that they're worried about too.

Let's talk to our business presenter, Sally Bondock.

Sally, just give us an overview how bad things are.

Pretty bad, as you were hearing from Mariko there.

And, I mean, you outlined just how dramatic the open has been in Europe this morning.

It's not overstating it to say it's carnage or a bloodbath or any of those adjectives to describe how today is progressing.

And, actually, the bookies or the futures markets are predicting we'll see a dramatic decline again today on Wall Street.

And what's kind of fed into this is, of course, Trump's tariffs.

That's the reason for the massive sell-off.

I think his defiance that we saw there on Air Force One as he was setting off or landing or whichever way he was going is really being read in markets as he's staying put, he's hanging tough, whatever phrases he's using.

Therefore, many investors now are pricing in this could be a long, hard battle.

And the impact that will have on economies around the world, the global economy is not going to be good.

And, actually, some are pricing in recession.

Goldman Sachs today increased the chances of a US recession to 45% this year.

So everyone is readjusting all their outlook now and they're pricing in bad stuff, basically.

When we hear about share prices tumbling, how does that translate into an economic recession, real-life effects that people will feel?

Well, when it comes to how we might feel the impact right now, I mean, for people who are trading markets on a daily basis, they're speculators.

There's lots of people who do that at home.

They're sitting in front of a terminal and they're trying to make money.

For them, it's really tough because they're either going to lose a lot or they might win a lot depending on how good they are.

For those of us who have pensions, so I'm not trading shares on a daily basis, but I do have a pension that I will one day be making use of.

So most pensions globally will have gone down in terms of their paper value.

But, of course, the good news about that is I'm not retiring anytime soon.

And so, therefore, by the time I do retire, the hope is that markets will have recovered significantly.

And that's why those who manage people's money, personal finance investors, investment advisors, always say you invest for the long term.

And by that you mean a long time, one year, five years, ten years or more.

Because there are lots of volatility on stock markets.

And in my career, I've seen massive sell-offs.

Previously, when the 2008 financial crisis happened, when the global pandemic happened, markets fell off a cliff.

Sally, we're just looking at pictures from Luxembourg because EU ministers responsible for trade are arriving there currently.

They're going to talk to the media, we think, about how the European Union should best respond to this series of tariffs, as well as a decision on EU relations with China.

But that is a problem for so many countries to decide what to do now, whether to retaliate or not to, and hope that perhaps you can negotiate something better.

And time is of the essence because we saw the blanket 10% tariffs come in over the weekend.

But those more specific retaliatory tariffs on the part of the US begin on Wednesday.

So between now and Wednesday, the European Union, European Commission have got the chance to negotiate with President Trump because, of course, he said he called Europe one of the worst offenders.

And the tariffs on all European goods is sitting at 20%, which is huge for some industries like the champagne industry, the wine sector, cosmetics, cars is 25%.

And actually, if you look on the stock markets today and you look at some of the biggest losers, it's VW, it's Mercedes, Peugeot, Citroen, those kind of companies.

So for the trade ministers meeting now in Luxembourg, they're going to be talking about that.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has been very forthright, very strong, talking about a united front in Europe and how we will come back with our tariffs as well.

She talked about €26 billion worth of tariffs on American goods coming into Europe, which will hit US hard.

But that's not been confirmed yet because, of course, they want to negotiate.

They want to try and get a deal before Wednesday.

How great is this secondary fear that these tariffs will end up with cheaper goods going elsewhere, being dumped on other countries that don't have tariffs?

It's a huge fear because China, for example, if we just give an example of that, BYD, massive electric vehicle maker in China, they're cheap.

They can make them really cheaply in China and then export them all over the world.

And that's one of the things that President Trump is not happy about whatsoever.

So if far fewer BYD cars are being sold in the United States, well, where are they all going to go?

I mean, of course, we've put tariffs on Chinese cars actually anyway here in Europe.

But the point is with steel, with other products that are being heavily tariffed going into the States, if they're channeled elsewhere, then it could end up here in the UK, dumped on our markets or on European markets or other markets, and then it makes it really difficult to compete with that, like British steel, for example.

So that's a real issue, and that's something that the prime minister has implied.

He's going to deliver a speech later today about ways that the UK government can try and cushion the blow for UK industry.

But it's expected there'll be some sort of discussion about anti-dumping measures, measures put in place to stop that from happening.

Sally, you've been speaking to a lot of different analysts over the last few hours.

The consensus on tariffs per se, they're not always a bad thing, but the consensus really about what's happened this time is that it is such a blanket application of tariffs.

I think the difference is, something that President Trump has said quite a few times is he refers back to the 1930s or whatever, when this was massively introduced on a huge level before, seen as a big protectionist policy that led to economic growth in the US eventually.

The difference, though, then compared to now is the globalisation of industry, of business, of commerce in the recent decades, because, of course, it's all been about world trade, it's all been about where is it most efficient to do things and make things and produce things, and then we just ship it all over the world and sell it.

And, you know, protectionism was at a minimum.

And because everything has changed, it means that now that you implement tariffs, it's not going to have the same impact as it did back in the 1930s.

And the consequences of implementing tariffs to such a great degree across the world is huge, and we're seeing the markets playing out the fear factor of what the impact could be on the global economy, because you can't just unravel supply chains that are global and all the various aspects of business and commerce that have been crossing borders very easily for decades.

And you're not going to suddenly be able to build a factory in America and make goods and sell them in America with American workers.

It's not going to happen quickly, and that's the worry.

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Trump defends tariffs after stock market turmoil | BBC News

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