Donald Trump unveiled his long-trailed and much-dreaded new list of tariffs. They were worse than expected. Mr Trump announced import levies of 10% on all goods entering America, but the European Union will face reciprocal tariffs of 20%, India 27%, Japan 24%, Vietnam 46% and China an additional 34%, taking its overall tariff rate to 65%. Many other countries also received higher tariffs. Mr Trump’s other punitive duties placed on industries such as cars and steel will at least avoid the additional country rates. Goods from Mexico and Canada that do not comply with the North American trade pact will still face the previously announced 25% tariff.
Happy now?
Markets slumped after Mr Trump’s announcement. Uncertainty about trade policy and worries about the economy were factors behind American stockmarkets registering their worst quarter since the third quarter of 2022. The S&P 500 fell by 4.6% from January to March and the NASDAQ Composite by more than 10%. Nvidia’s stock tumbled by 19%, Alphabet’s by 18% and Apple’s and Microsoft’s by 11%. By contrast the Europe STOXX 600, London’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX all made gains. No market is likely to be immune from Mr Trump’s latest offensive in the trade war.
Gold reached another record of $3,167 a troy ounce. Investors have flocked to the commodity, a traditional haven in times of stockmarket stress, pushing the price to its best quarterly performance since 1986.
Tesla delivered 336,681 electric vehicles in the first quarter, far fewer than analysts had expected and down by 13%, year on year. The company’s stock fell by 36% in the first three months of the year. Tesla’s arch-rival, BYD of China, sold 416,388 pure EVs, an increase of 39%. Its overall deliveries of passenger vehicles rose by 58%.
Eyebrows were raised on Wall Street at Elon Musk’s announcement that xAI, his artificial-intelligence business, had bought X, his social-media platform, for $45bn, $1bn more than the $44bn he paid for what was then Twitter in 2022. He gave no details of how the deal was structured, causing some to wonder if regulators would investigate. Mr Musk said that the intertwined companies would be more easily able to combine computing power, data and AI models.
SoftBank and other investors injected $40bn into OpenAI in a new round of fund-raising that valued the firm behind ChatGPT at $300bn. OpenAI is changing its structure from a non-profit to a for-profit company. If it were listed at its current valuation it would make the top 30 on the S&P 500.
According to reports, the American government sent a letter to several large companies in Europe telling them to comply with Donald Trump’s ban on diversity initiatives. The letter says that the order applies to firms that are either a supplier or service provider to the American government, even if based outside the US.
China’s market regulator opened a review into Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s sale of dozens of ports to BlackRock, an American firm. The review caused the sign-off on the deal to be delayed. The acquisition is set to include ports in the Panama Canal, which Mr Trump has hailed as America taking back control of the waterway. It is unclear if China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has made a final decision on the deal, amid speculation that he may just be trying to gain leverage over Mr Trump.
The euro zone’s annual inflation rate fell again in March, to 2.2%. The inflation rate for services, which the European Central Bank has been watching closely when it makes its calculations on interest rates, dropped to 3.4%, the lowest level in three years.
In his first big speech since becoming Intel’s chief executive last month Lip-Bu Tan promised to turn the chipmaker’s fortunes around. Intel has been struggling to compete with the likes of TSMC and is far behind in the race to develop chips for AI. Mr Tan promised to bring about a “cultural change” that would mean the company acts more like a startup and recruits new talent. “Bureaucracy kills innovation,” he said. Intel announced 15,000 job cuts last August.
Rolling in it
An annual survey compiled by Forbes estimated that there are now 3,028 billionaires in the world, up by 247 from last year (the list is based on share prices and exchange rates as of March 7th). America has 902 of them, followed by China and Hong Kong with 516 and India with 205. Germany has 171 and Russia 140. Britain was tenth, with 55 billionaires. Elon Musk’s detractors were disappointed to learn that with a net worth of $342bn he is still the world’s richest man; Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are some way behind. The list’s new arrivals include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Seinfeld and Bruce Springsteen.