Trump Tariffs Live Updates: Global Markets Reel From Shock of Tariffs

Markets in Asia and Europe dropped sharply and U.S. futures were down. China vowed to take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.” Its state media described the tariffs as “self-defeating bullying.”

In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the bloc would be united in its response to the tariffs. “If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said. The duties posed a particular threat to attempts to revive the largest economy in Europe, Germany’s, which has been stagnant.

The response from Japan, the largest overseas investor in the United States, was more restrained. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the tariffs “extremely regrettable.” But he refrained from talk of retaliation, saying that his government was trying to impress upon the Trump administration that Japan is helping the United States to industrialize again.

Britain also did not suggest it would immediately retaliate. Instead, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said negotiations toward a trade deal with the U.S. would continue.

Business groups, trade experts, economists, Democratic lawmakers and even a few Republicans swiftly denounced the tariffs, while some industries scrambled to understand how they would be affected.

Mr. Trump framed his policies as a response to a national emergency, saying that tariffs were needed to boost domestic production.

Mr. Trump could have tried to fix the rules governing global trade, which he says allies have abused to the detriment of the U.S. economy and American consumers, said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. Instead, he said, “Trump has chosen to blow up the system governing international trade.”

Here’s what else to know:

• Tariff rates: The United States will subject Chinese goods to a staggering new tariff of 34 percent, on top of the tariffs that Mr. Trump had already imposed since January. The European Union’s tariff was set at 20 percent, Japan’s at 24 percent, Britain’s at 10 percent and India’s at 26 percent. Mr. Trump said little about the methodology behind those calculations.

• Markets fall: The market reaction suggested that the scale of the tariffs had come as a surprise. Futures on the S&P 500 slumped over 3 percent, as benchmark indexes dropped more than 3 percent in Japan and nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong and South Korea. The Stoxx Europe 600 was down more than 2 percent and Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, dropped by 3 percent.

• Loophole closed: Mr. Trump also scrapped a loophole called the de minimis rule, which has been used by many e-commerce companies to send low-cost goods to the United States from China without having to pay taxes.

• Auto tariffs: New tariffs on all automobiles made outside the United States took effect, adding to previous tariffs on steel, aluminum and other imports that Mr. Trump has imposed since returning to office in January.

Some experts are questioning how durable Trump’s tariffs will be from a legal perspective. Inu Manak, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that it was “surprising” that Trump had chosen to rest his tariffs on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. She said the tariffs he imposed against Canada, China and Mexico last month using that authority “really stretch the interpretation of that law.” She added: “This action takes it even further, using the false claim that the trade deficit is somehow reflective of trade barriers.”

It remains to be seen whether a group or company will bring a legal challenge against the tariffs, since they may face blowback from the Trump administration. But Manak says the fact that a handful of Republicans broke ranks yesterday to vote to terminate the emergency powers used to apply tariffs to Canada is “a sign that Trump is losing some support in his party, and that there is a chance that congressional action to rein in the president’s abuse of his trade authorities is possible.”

European Union: The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the bloc would be united in its response, but did not specify what measures it would take. “If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said. Mr. Trump imposed a 20 percent tariff on European Union goods.

Britain: Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not suggest that Britain would immediately retaliate, and said that negotiations toward a trade deal with the United States would continue. The Trump administration has imposed a 10 percent tariff on Britain, lower than the 20 percent tariff it levied on the European Union.

France: Prime Minister François Bayrou of France, an E.U. member, said that the tariffs were “a catastrophe for the economic world” and would also cause pain for the United States. France’s government spokeswoman, Sophie Primas, provided some detail about how the European Union could respond to the new tariffs. “We are also going to attack services,” which make up the bulk of the American economy, she said in an interview with French radio. That could include online services provided by Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, she added.

Germany: Finance Minister Jörg Kukies said he remained hopeful that Europe would be able to reach a deal with Washington, but added: “We do need a strong reaction.” He told the BBC, “It would be naïve to think that if we just sit there and let this happen, things will get better.” The tariffs on E.U. goods, especially on automotive parts, threaten Germany’s attempts to revive its stagnant economy, the largest in Europe.

India: The Commerce Ministry said it was “carefully examining the implications of the various measures” announced by the United States, after Mr. Trump imposed 27 percent tariffs against it. Mr. Trump has long been irritated by the large U.S. trade deficit with India, despite his close relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Japan: Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the tariffs “extremely regrettable,” but refrained from talk of retaliation. He said that his government was trying to impress upon the Trump administration that Japan is helping the United States to re-industrialize as its largest overseas investor.

Trade data paints a more complicated picture. The value of U.S. trade with Russia has fallen to its lowest level in decades following the invasion. But last year, Russia still exported about $3 billion worth of goods to the United States, according to U.S. trade figures, mostly fertilizer and platinum.

That figure is significantly higher than the value of U.S. imports from some smaller countries that Mr. Trump targeted, such as Laos and Fiji, prompting questions about whether the White House’s decision to spare Russia was a strategic choice.

Mr. Trump recently threatened to impose tariffs on buyers of Russian oil, a trade that is the lifeline of the country’s war machine, if President Vladimir V. Putin did not cooperate with U.S. efforts to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine. Such tariffs would significantly complicate the country’s foreign trade.

Mr. Trump may be holding back new economic restrictions on Russia as leverage in the peace talks, said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and a former official at the Russian central bank.

“I think it’s a political decision,” Ms. Prokopenko said. “Trump does not want to escalate while his talks with Putin are ongoing.”

The idea that Mr. Trump is using tariffs as a geopolitical bargaining tool appears to be supported by his treatment of Iran, another target of his deal-making ambitions. He put Iran in the lowest tier of the new tariffs, 10 percent, which is lower than the rate imposed on Israel, a staunch U.S. ally.

The composition of Russia’s exports could have also played a role. Russia is the third largest foreign supplier of fertilizer to the United States, and the total amount of its fertilizer exports has increased over the past year.

Mr. Trump has been weighing how to protect American farmers, a key constituency, from the effects of his trade wars. Keeping the cost of fertilizer low could be part of that strategy.

The scale of the tariffs has intensified concerns about damage to the global economy and made investors think the Federal Reserve will need to be more aggressive in cutting interest rates. Investors had been betting on three more quarter-point cuts this year, but the chances of a fourth have now increased, trading in financial markets implied.

For many central banks, the prospect of a global trade war has made it more difficult to calibrate the right level of interest rates because it makes the outlook for inflation more uncertain.

“This uncertainty means we need to be extremely prudent” when setting rates, said Luis de Guindos, vice president of the European Central Bank. An escalation in trade tensions could lead to higher import costs and higher inflation, or it could reduce demand for European exports, depress the economy and weaken inflation pressures, he said.

India’s Commerce Ministry said it was “carefully examining the implications of the various measures” announced by the United States, after President Trump imposed 27 percent tariffs against the country. The value of India’s goods exports to the U.S. stood at over $87bn last year, compared to its imports of about $42bn, and President Trump has long been irritated by the U.S. deficit in the trade of goods with India, despite enjoying a close relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Commerce Ministry said it remained focused on doubling goods and services trade between U.S. and India to $500 billion by 2030 — a goal outlined by the two governments during Modi’s visit to the White House in February.

Mr. Scholz, whose government lost an election in February but is still operating in a caretaker capacity, is limited in his ability to act as the country awaits the formation of a new government, expected in the coming weeks. The timing couldn’t be worse for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to respond to the tariffs without clear leadership.

Germany could be the hardest hit of all 27 members of the bloc, given the large amount of trade that Germany does with the United States. Last year, Germany exported goods worth 161.4 billion euros, or $178.4 billion, to the United States, according to the country’s federal statistics office.

Last month, Germany’s Parliament agreed to loosen the country’s restrictions on debt in an effort to juice the economy, which contracted for the past two years. The move allowed lawmakers to create a new infrastructure fund worth €500 billion (almost $550 billion), which restored some optimism to markets and businesses.

But economists at Morgan Stanley warned that the impact of the tariffs could threaten prospective growth sparked by the package and the possibility of increased spending on defense.

“We think the impacts on Germany are likely to be almost double those we estimate for the euro area,” they wrote in a research note, adding that tariffs could ”potentially offset” the growth prospects from the stimulus package.

The country remained hopeful that Europe would be able to reach a deal with Washington, said Jörg Kukies, Germany’s finance minister, who met with the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and U.S. trade representatives in Washington last week. But he added that negotiations alone would not be enough.

“We do need a strong reaction,” Mr. Kukies told the BBC. “It would be naïve to think that if we just sit there and let this happen, things will get better.” He said that he believed Washington was expecting the European Union to respond, but called for it to be in “a measured and constructive way.”

Mr. Trump imposed a 20 percent tariff on European Union goods on Wednesday, and a 25 percent levy on cars and automotive parts. But the uncertainty created by Mr. Trump’s policies, which can be announced or rescinded on a moment’s notice with little explanation, made the situation even worse, said Monika Schnitzer, a professor of economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich who is an adviser to the German government.

“Companies can adjust to tariffs, but not to threats that change by the hour,” she said. “That damages the economy.”

German carmakers were already bracing for the 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump announced last week and took effect on Thursday. Automaking is Germany’s largest industry, and the United States is its most important export destination.

Analysts at Bernstein, a financial research firm, have predicted that the new measures would cost Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, the country’s three leading automakers, $11 billion overall.

The German auto companies have assembly plants in the United States, but they will not be immune from the tariffs because most vehicles are assembled with parts that come from a patchwork of countries. In recent weeks, sales for BMW and Volkswagen have jumped in the United States, as consumers scrambled to get ahead of expected price increases caused by Mr. Trump’s new tariffs.

Calling the sweeping tariffs “a frontal attack on world trade,” Dirk Jandura, president of the German trade association BGA, urged the European Union to swiftly enact counter-tariffs in an effort to end the trade dispute.

Mr. Jandura also urged Germany’s export-dependent industries to rethink their business model. “This is also a wake-up call for us: We have to become more competitive ourselves,” Mr. Jandura said.

But German officials warned that the trade war would ultimately hurt Americans more than the targets of the tariffs. “For consumers in the U.S., the day will not be Liberation Day, but Inflation Day,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, told reporters.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Berlin.

They are now among the vast categories of goods subject to additional taxes after President Trump, on Wednesday, imposed universal tariffs on all U.S. trade partners as well as additional, heavier duties on 60 countries he deemed the “worst offenders” of unfair trade practices.

In a sharp shift away from decades of trade policy, Mr. Trump instituted a 10 percent base line duty on all goods imported into the United States. In addition, other nations will be charged a so-called reciprocal tariff at an even higher rate next week.

For the European Union and China, the two largest U.S. trading partners, the White House imposed tariffs of 20 percent and 34 percent. The additional levy on China will be added to a 20 percent tariff previously imposed by Mr. Trump.

Even close allies such as Japan and South Korea were not spared. Neither were countries like Australia and Brazil that buy more from America than they sell to it.

The announcement, which Mr. Trump had hailed as America’s “Liberation Day,” sent shock waves across the world and raised the specter of a global trade war. Stock markets tumbled on the news, as investors were surprised at the size and scope of the tariffs.

In less than three months, Mr. Trump has pronounced tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China along with import duties on steel, aluminum, cars and car parts. The executive order on Wednesday included exemptions for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and lumber. But analysts think those are not reprieves; they are products next to be targeted.

Allies and adversaries are scrambling to make sense of Mr. Trump’s tariff barrage, which has lifted U.S. import duties to their highest levels in more than a century and showed no sign of relenting. Some threatened to retaliate. Others openly pressed for negotiations, while some quietly pushed for concessions through back channels.

China accused America of “unilateral bullying,” pledging to take “firm countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests.” South Korea convened an emergency task force and vowed to “pour all government resources to overcome a trade crisis.” In Brazil, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said it was evaluating retaliatory measures.

In an early morning address on Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said that the global economy will “massively suffer” from the tariffs. While urging negotiation, she said the bloc is preparing further countermeasures in addition to the retaliatory tariffs it had already prepared for the earlier tax on foreign steel and aluminum.

Asia was particularly hard hit by Mr. Trump’s plan. Vietnam, a beneficiary of companies moving production out of China during the first Trump presidency, got slapped with a 46 percent levy. Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia were all dealt import duties of more than 30 percent. The White House put a 26 percent tariff on imports from India.

For decades, exports have served as a pathway to economic prosperity for developing Asian countries emerging from conflict, crisis or poverty. The latest tariffs punished countries like Taiwan and Japan that have succeeded in modernizing their economies through trade, and they also darkened the prospects for poorer nations like Cambodia and Bangladesh still looking to follow that route.

Cambodia, a producer of clothing and footwear, was hit with a 49 percent tariff. The United States is the country’s largest export market.

“As a small country, we just want to survive,” said Sok Eysan, a spokesman for Cambodia’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

Mr. Trump has blamed the sale of inexpensive goods from these countries for the hollowing out of America’s manufacturing sector. But they have also helped to keep inflation at bay, lowering prices for U.S. consumers.

Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, D.C., said the tariffs would hit several developing countries hardest, while encouraging much of the world to move more quickly toward an order without the United States at its center.

“When it comes to trade, we are very much in a multipolar world, and alternative markets exist. Though of course there will be pain and transaction costs in diversification,” he said.

Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, said his country would not respond with retaliatory tariffs, vowing Australia would not “join a race to the bottom that leads to higher prices and slower growth.”

In Japan, officials and trade experts were caught off guard by the size of the new tariff the country will face — 24 percent. It was particularly jarring given Japan’s average tariff on nonagricultural goods is among the lowest globally. Japan called the tariff “extremely regrettable” and vowed to continue seeking an exemption.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has pledged to increase Japanese investment to roughly $1 trillion, focusing on purchasing more U.S. products like liquefied natural gas.

Speaking before the latest tariffs were announced, Takeshi Niinami, chief executive of Suntory Holdings, a Japanese beverage giant known for premium whiskey brands, said he believed the tariffs could be negotiated down because Japan is the biggest foreign investor in the United States.

“A period of chaos may ensue,” he said. “But ultimately, the situation will stabilize.”

Exiger, a data analytics firm, calculated that Trump’s announcements would result in $600 billion of new U.S. tariffs per year. The bulk of the levy would come from 10 countries, with Chinese exports accounting for a quarter of the additional tariffs at $149 billion. Vietnamese goods would face $63 billion, Taiwanese products $37 billion, and Japanese exports $36 billion in tariffs. German and Irish goods combined would face $41 billion in additional levies.

During the first Trump presidency, tech companies moved some production to Vietnam to protect against a possible trade war with China. One-third of Vietnam’s exports are now electronics.

Apple moved manufacturing of AirPods, watches and iPads over the last several years to Vietnam. It also shifted some iPhone production to India, after years of relying solely on Chinese factories.

South Korean conglomerate Samsung Electronics has invested more than $20 billion in Vietnam since it started opening factories there nearly two decades ago. It now produces more goods in Vietnam than China. Last year, it produced roughly $70 billion worth of goods at its Vietnamese factories, most of it for export.

Mr. Trump’s policies are also complicating decisions for smaller American businesses. Brenden McMorrow, co-founder of Move2Play, a toymaker based in Torrance, Calif., said the company built all of its products in China since it started about nine years ago. But it began to consider factories in Vietnam or India to protect against Chinese import tariffs.

In Vietnam, it found that the factories run by Chinese companies using materials from China were not much cheaper. Instead, it decided to try a test run of manufacturing one of its toys in India — a decision that Mr. McMorrow said looks better with the lofty tariff imposed on Vietnam. It studied whether it could manufacture in the United States, but he said that the costs were roughly five times higher than in China.

And despite the higher cost of tariffs, he doesn’t see U.S. production as any more viable now.

“I don’t think it really makes sense to invest in trying to do a lot of this manufacturing in the U.S. If the next president comes in and just reverses course on all these tariffs, then you’re going to be in a terrible spot,” he said. “It makes more sense to just kind of stick to where we’re currently manufacturing and not make big risky moves.”

Damien Cave, Jack Nicas, Victoria Kim, Alex Travelli, Choe Sang-Hun, Sui-Lee Wee and David Pierson contributed reporting.

Trump’s decision to put a 32 percent tariff on Switzerland stunned politicians and business leaders in the Alpine country. Switzerland has an open trade policy and recently abolished all industrial tariffs, including on goods from the United States, which is also its largest export market.

EconomieSuisse, Switzerland’s main business lobby, denounced the tariff as “unfair,” and said it was “excessively high” compared to a 20 percent levy on the European Union and 10 percent for the U.K.. The tax will deal “a severe blow” to the Swiss economy, the group said.

European stock markets have followed Asian indexes lower. The Stoxx Europe 600 was down 1.2 percent in morning trading, with shares in most sectors, including banks, technology and consumer goods, falling.

Among the hardest hit European stocks were retail brands after Trump imposed steep tariffs on major shoe- and clothing-producing countries, such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Shares in Adidas and Puma tumbling more than 9 percent. Pandora, a Danish jewellery company that makes products in Thailand, was the worst performer in the Stoxx Europe 600, plunging 13 percent.

Although President Trump held off on imposing tariffs on oil and natural gas, prices for these commodities still fell sharply today. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, dropped by 3 percent on Thursday. European natural gas futures also fell, by about 2.5 percent.

The reaction likely reflects fears that the tariffs will apply brakes to the world economy. Demand for oil is closely related to economic growth. And Trump has focused much of his tariff fire on Asia, which has been the main growth market for oil in recent years. In a note to clients on Thursday, analysts at Citigroup said that the tariffs were “much worse than expected.”

Yet in another sense, it was a Pyrrhic victory: Britain was subject to the same blanket tariff as dozens of countries, even though the United States runs a trade surplus with Britain, according to U.S. statistics.

Britain clearly hopes to strike some kind of trade deal with Mr. Trump down the road, which could spare it the tariffs’ lasting effect. On Thursday, Mr. Starmer told business executives that the British would react with “cool and calm heads.”

The question is whether he will stick to his strategy — resisting pressure to impose retaliatory tariffs, for example — or fall into line with other countries, like Canada, in striking back against the United States. Downing Street said it would not impose tit-for-tat measures while trade talks were underway.

“His strategy up till now has been perfectly understandable,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London. “If I were him, I would have done the same. Now he needs to avoid confrontation for the sake of it, but there’s no point in appeasement either.”

Professor Portes said targeted retaliatory moves might make sense as a negotiating tactic. But an across-the-board tariff on American goods, he said, would only deepen the damage to Britain’s economy, which was sputtering even before Mr. Trump announced his measures on Wednesday.

Britain has bargaining chips at its disposal, including reducing an existing 2 percent tax on digital services. Professor Portes said Britain could play hardball in other ways — for example, acting against X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s ally. Critics have accused the platform of fomenting hate speech, while Mr. Musk has used X to campaign against Mr. Starmer’s government.

If Mr. Starmer fails to extract anything more from Mr. Trump after all his efforts, it could embarrass him politically. But analysts said the bigger threat was the impact on Britain’s slow-growing economy. The Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent fiscal watchdog, said tit-for-tat 20 percent tariffs could shrink the British economy by 1 percent next year. It had forecast growth of 1.9 percent.

Britain’s finances are already under extreme pressure. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, increased taxes on employers and is planning large welfare cuts to cover spending on depleted services and to meet her promise to balance the budget and get debt levels down.

Britain, with its small, open economy, is deeply vulnerable to the effects of a trade war. British officials, led by the ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, have negotiated energetically with the White House to avert these tariffs. They did not retaliate against previous tariffs on steel and aluminum, or on vehicles, which came into effect Thursday.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business and trade minister who has been involved in the talks, said the watchword was “pragmatism.” On Tuesday, he told the BBC that Britain was in the “best possible position of any country” to reverse tariffs.

Britain runs either an $89 billion trade surplus or a $14.5 billion deficit with the United States, depending on whether one cites British or American statistics. (The difference rests in part on how the two sides treat offshore financial centers like Jersey and Guernsey, which are crown dependencies.) Trade in goods, with which Mr. Trump is most fixated, is relatively in balance.

Among the British exporters facing upheaval is the luxury auto industry, as carmakers like Jaguar, Bentley, Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin do not have assembly plants in the United States. More than 40,000 British businesses exported goods to the United States in 2023, according to customs data.

Mr. Starmer faces a delicate calculation in deciding how to respond to Mr. Trump. Given the president’s unpopularity in Britain, analysts said Mr. Starmer and his Labour Party could reap a short-term benefit by retaliating.

“Standing up to Trump might suit what he’s been trying to do, which is make Labour the patriotic party,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.

It would also distance Labour from Reform U.K., an anti-immigrant party whose leader, Nigel Farage, has close ties to Mr. Trump. And it would allow Mr. Starmer to draw closer to the European Union, which is expected to impose its own countermeasures.

Responding to Mr. Trump “could be a short-term political gain,” Professor Fielding said, but for Mr. Starmer in the longer-term, “any kind of tariff war could damage the economy, which will hurt his prospects for re-election.”

Germany had been hoping that a new government could help revive its stagnant economy, but economists fear the tariffs could dampen the modest growth of 0.3 percent predicted for this year. The country’s acting finance minister, Jörg Kukies, is calling on the European Union to react.

Kukies said on Thursday that Germany remained hopeful that Europe might be able to reach a deal with Washington but that negotiations alone would not be enough.“We do need a strong reaction,” he told the BBC. “It would be naive to think that if we just sit there and let this happen, things will get better.”

Up until the day before Mr. Trump’s tariff announcements on Wednesday, prominent business executives in Tokyo said they were hopeful Japan would be spared. Those hopes were dashed when Mr. Trump said U.S. imports from Japan would face a 24 percent tariff. Last week, he said that cars, Japan’s top export to the United States, would be subject to a 25 percent tax.

While other places affected by the U.S. tariffs — including the European Union, Canada and China — have declared their intentions to retaliate with their own taxes on American goods, Japanese officials have refrained from talking about a similar move.

That is in part because the state of Japan’s economy and the importance of its trade with the United States would make it difficult to do so, analysts say.

Over the past few years, inflation, largely driven by rising energy and food costs, has surged in Japan and strained its economy. Japan’s imports from the United States are largely commodities, including natural gas and agricultural products.

That is why imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports would be “self-defeating” and “simply not a viable option,” said Stefan Angrick, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in Tokyo. “The only remaining strategy is to shift the narrative and emphasize Japan’s willingness to import more commodities,” he said.

American officials, including Mr. Trump, have repeatedly raised concerns about Japan’s non-tariff trade barriers, specifically citing import restrictions on agricultural products like rice and automotive standards that they contend put American manufacturers at a disadvantage.

At a news conference on Thursday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, declined to comment on what Japan would be willing to consider conceding in trade negotiations with the United States. Other officials, including the prime minister, refrained from talk of retaliation.

Japan’s standards for certifying automobiles for use in the country are based on those established by the United Nations, Mr. Hayashi said. He also said that he has explained to his counterparts in Washington the details and logic behind Japan’s rice-import policies.

“Despite this, it is extremely regrettable that the U.S. government has announced the recent reciprocal tariff measures mentioning rice,” Mr. Hayashi said. “In any case, Japan will continue to strongly urge the United States to review its measures.”

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy said President Trump’s tariffs were “a measure that I consider wrong.” In a Facebook post, she said Europe would “do everything we can to work a deal with the United States, aiming to prevent a trade war that would inevitably weaken the West in favor of other global actors.”

Meloni cleared her schedule for the day to focus on the response to U.S. tariffs, her office said in a statement. President Trump’s announcement included a new 20 percent tariff on imports from the European Union.

The countries facing U.S. tariffs on their exports will want to negotiate, but “these are the same people who have been ripping us off for all these years,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday night, echoing President Trump’s criticism of the United States’ trading partners.

The “European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” Lutnick said. He also cited India, Japan and South Korea as examples of countries that have treated the United States unfairly.

The tariffs imposed on Chinese imports by Mr. Trump during his second term have created a severe burden on companies importing from China. These are on top of the tariffs he placed on Chinese imports during his first term.

“There are no winners in a trade war,” the commerce ministry said, urging the United States to use dialogue for resolving trade issues.

The tariffs on China have likely dimmed hope of a meeting between the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Mr. Trump, who has expressed interest in a summit.

Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, told Russian state media this week that the United States needed to remove the tariffs imposed on China earlier this year before any talks could take place between the two countries.

“If the U.S. side keeps on pressuring and even blackmailing, China surely will be resolute in its countermeasures,” Mr. Wang said.

China imposed tariffs on American exports, such as agricultural products, in response to the two earlier rounds of U.S. tariffs. Beijing’s options this time could include more tariffs, restrictions on U.S. investment in China or export controls on rare earth minerals.