Live Updates
Markets plunge on Trump’s tariffs as Netanyahu visits White House
” data-timestamp-html=”
” data-check-event-based-preview data-is-vertical-video-embed data-network-id data-publish-date=”2025-04-06T21:54:06.429Z” data-video-section=”politics” data-canonical-url=”https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/06/politics/video/recession-chance-economy-donald-trump-presidency-harry-enten-digvid” data-branding-key data-video-slug=”recession-chance-economy-donald-trump-presidency-harry-enten-digvid” data-first-publish-slug=”recession-chance-economy-donald-trump-presidency-harry-enten-digvid” data-video-tags data-breakpoints=”{“video-resource–media-extra-large”: 660}” data-display-video-cover=”true” data-details data-track-zone=”live-story-lede” data-sticky-anchor-pos=”bottom”>
Enten on rising chance of recession
01:38 – Source: CNN
Enten on rising chance of recession
01:38
• Markets tumble: US stocks are extremely volatile today as traders search for any sign that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could be negotiated or halted. US stocks tumbled for a third straight day Monday, and the S&P 500 entered bear market territory. Markets in Asia and Europe also plunged today. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index nosedived, closing 13.2% lower – its worst day since 1997.
• Trump’s trade war: As US and global stock markets tanked, Trump urged patience this morning and defended the state of the US economy. With the administration sending mixed signals on whether his trade policies are open for negotiation, fears of a global recession are mounting. The European Union is “ready to negotiate” with the US and has offered to scrap tariffs on industrial goods, the president of the European Commission said.
• Netanyahu visit: Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is set to meet Trump at the White House this afternoon, marking his second visit since January. The leaders are expected to discuss new tariffs on Israel, the war in Gaza, and other key issues.
The wild swings in financial markets on Monday morning underscore how badly investors want President Donald Trump to pause the trade war.
US stocks surged off their lows and even briefly turned positive on rumors of a 90-day pause. However, that rebound proved fleeting as traders realized nothing official had been announced.
Oversold markets desperate for good news are subject to wild swings that can quickly reverse, Hogan added.
The European Union is “ready to negotiate” with the United States and has offered to scrap tariffs on industrial goods, Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said Monday.
“These tariffs come first and foremost at immense costs for US consumers and businesses but, at the same time, they have a massive impact on the global economy,” the head of the EU’s executive arm said at a news conference in Brussels.
Following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of hefty tariffs on dozens of countries last week, EU exports to the US face a 20% “reciprocal” tariff, while its steel and auto industry face a 25% tariff. Von der Leyen said the tariffs, which have caused a global market rout, represent a “major turning point” for the US.
Asked when the EU tabled the zero-tariff offer, von der Leyen said the offer was made “long before” Trump’s latest tariff announcement and “repeatedly, for example, in the automotive sector.” She stressed that the EU has long gone “zero for zero with other countries that also have a strong automotive sector.”
At the same time, the EU is willing to play hardball: Although the EU would prefer to strike a “negotiated settlement,” the bloc is also “preparing a potential list (of US imports) for retaliation,” she said.
US stocks were extremely volatile Monday as traders searched for any sign that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could be negotiated or halted.
Markets around the world had tumbled over concerns about how Trump’s sweeping tariffs might upend the global economy and stymie US economic growth. US stocks opened the day in bear market territory but surged an hour later on rumors that the Trump administration may pause tariffs – perhaps for several months.
That rumor turned out to be just that, it seems. And the Dow, which had risen nearly 900 points, was back down once again.
The Dow was lower 500 points, or 1.3%. The broader S&P 500 edged lower. The Nasdaq Composite was 0.1% lower.
At the open, the S&P 500 tumbled into bear market territory – a decline of 20% from a recent peak – before pulling back. The decline in US stocks came after a historic rout in Asia and massive losses in Europe.
The S&P 500 hit a record high less than seven weeks ago, on February 19. If the index closes in bear market territory, that would be the second-fastest peak-to-bear market shift in history (the fastest occurred during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic).
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said Monday’s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump will be the first in-person meeting with a foreign country to negotiate on tariffs announced last week.
“Israel is the first meeting today,” Hassett said, alluding to all the countries trying to negotiate. “President Trump has talked to world leaders all weekend.”
“I’m sure they will talk about trade policy and Middle East policy as well,” Hassett told Fox News on Monday from the White House.
Hassett emphasized that the US is prepared for a “good deal.”
The US imposed a 17% tariff on Israel, according to Trump’s announcement last week.
President Donald Trump said Monday that “countries from all over the World” are talking to the United States after he announced reciprocal tariffs last week and that “tough but fair parameters are being set,” specifically mentioning the Japanese prime minister sending negotiators.
Trump also highlighted China as a particular focus, suggesting that trade relations with China need significant changes.
“It all has to change, but especially with CHINA!!!”
Asian markets dip: Global markets plunged on Monday, deepening a global stocks rout triggered by Trump’s trade war and China’s forceful response to unexpectedly high tariffs. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed 7.9% lower, while the broader Topix finished down 7.7%. Tech giant Sony plummeted more than 10%.
CNN’s Juliana Liu and John Liu contributed to this report.
Last week Vietnam offered to lower its tariffs on American exports to 0% in exchange for the same treatment, according to a report published by the Vietnamese government on Friday. That came after President Donald Trump spoke with Vietnam’s General Secretary Tô Lâm on Friday in a call Trump labeled “productive.”
But White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Monday that Vietnam’s offer is not being taken seriously.
More context: Vietnam is among the nations set to see the highest “reciprocal” tariff rates of 46% come April 9, according to the new tariff regime the Trump administration unveiled last week. Vietnam was the United States’ sixth-largest source of imports last year, according to US Commerce Department data.
The tariffs Trump is set to impose could raise the price for a slew of goods which the US relies heavily on from Vietnam, including electronics, apparel and footwear
US stocks opened lower Monday as markets around the world tumbled over concerns about how President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs might upend the global economy and stymie US economic growth.
Markets opened in bear market territory – a decline of 20% from a recent peak – after a historic rout in Asia and massive losses in Europe.
The Dow fell 1,200 points, or 3.2%. The broader S&P 500 was 3.4% lower and opened in bear territory. The Nasdaq Composite slid 3.96%. The S&P 500 hit a record high less than seven weeks ago, on February 19. If the index closes in bear market territory, that would be the second-fastest peak-to-bear market shift in history (the fastest occurred during the 2020 pandemic).
Wall Street’s fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, has surged to levels not seen since the Covid-19 pandemic as investors fret over the market’s next move. CNN’s Fear and Greed Index has slumped to its lowest levels this year.
President Donald Trump’s decision to impose sweeping tariffs on trading partners could derail the global move toward green energy, aimed at preventing the worst impacts of climate change.
The tariffs will likely make key green technologies more expensive and could also force governments to divert resources from addressing the climate crisis into propping up their economies.
China is the world’s largest producer of many of the materials that are crucial for clean energy technologies. Among others, it exports vast amounts of lithium and lithium batteries as well as the materials used to build wind turbines and solar panels.
The E3G independent climate change think tank said in a research paper that the tariffs will increase the cost of manufacturing of low-carbon technologies and could eventually result in higher prices for consumers — at a time when prices were going down, encouraging faster transition.
Climate policies are already being changed because of the tariffs.
More context: The UK government on Monday scrapped some electric vehicle sales targets, specifically quoting the “new era of global insecurity” as one of the reasons. While the government kept the 2030 deadline to stop sales of new petrol and diesel cars, it gave companies more flexibility up until then, and it also slashed the fines for those who don’t meet the targets.
After the Canadian government scrapped the consumer carbon tax last month, some Canadian provinces followed suit and stopped other carbon levies, quoting the US tariffs among the reasons.
To avoid the worst of the climate crisis, the world needs to quickly transition to clean energy. With governments and businesses facing economic pressures, resources could be diverted away from green projects. That will likely backfire as failing to invest in emission cutting now will make more costly to deal with the consequences in the future.
President Donald Trump urged patience and warned against becoming “panican” in a post Monday ahead of markets opening in the United States.
Trump was writing as markets traded sharply lower in Asia and Europe, and a US futures tumbled. Earlier this morning, Trump defended the US economy and claims tariffs will boost revenue
White House national economic council director Kevin Hassett defended President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Monday, responding to billionaire Trump supporter Bill Ackman who criticized and said the “economic nuclear war” is triggered by tariffs.
“I would urge everyone, especially Bill, to ease the ease off the rhetoric a little bit,” Hassett told Fox News on Monday from the White House.
Ackman, who endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid for president, said Sunday that America was heading toward a self-inflicted “economic nuclear winter” because of Trump’s tariff policy rollout.
Hassett also responded to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has issued a bunt warning about Trump’s tariff policy. Dimon said America’s “extraordinary standing” in the world was built on the strength of its economy, military and morals. But tariffs and Trump’s “America First” foreign policy could undermine that standing.
“Trump came into office with the biggest debt to GDP that we’ve seen in the US ever since World War 2,” Hassett said. “And what we’re doing right now is we’re fixing that,” he added in response to Dimon.
Trump’s announcement last week, targeting nearly all the US trading partners last week, including a 10% tariff on all imports and higher tariffs on certain countries, triggered a sharp and ongoing decline in global markets, with several nations imposing retaliatory tariffs on goods.
The global market rout sparked by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs deepened in Asia and Europe on Monday, with the US bracing for a further slump when its markets open shortly.
Although the president has doubled down on his trade policy, members of his administration failed to offer a coherent message about his strategy over the weekend. Some of Trump’s billionaire backers are now calling for a return to freer trade.
Here’s what you need to know:
• Asian markets plummet: With trading now over for the day, Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index closed 13.2% down – its worst day since 1997. The city’s financial markets had been closed Friday for an annual festival.
• Europe also slumps: Stocks indexes in Europe are down around 5% halfway through the day’s trading. Meanwhile, European Union trade ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss a response to Trump’s tariffs.
• US markets set to open: If the US stock market closes in bear territory – a drop of 20% from a recent peak – it would be the earliest in a new administration that a bull market has turned into a bear market in the history of the S&P 500, which dates back to 1957.
• Dimon sounds alarm: JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon has warned that Trump’s tariffs could raise prices, tip the global economy into recession and weaken America’s standing in the world by tearing up its alliances.
• Trump doubles down: After his trade policy wiped trillions of dollars off global markets last week, Trump told reporters late Sunday that he doesn’t want “anything to go down,” but that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” On Monday morning, Trump defended his policy in a Truth Social post, saying tariffs would bring in billions of dollars in revenue.
• Musk breaks rank: Elon Musk has said he would be in favor of a “zero-tariff situation” between the US and EU, after the man he helped elect as president imposed a 20% tariff on the bloc. Bill Ackman, another of Trump’s billionaire backers, has also criticized the president’s trade policy.
• MAGA’s mixed signals: Top Trump administration officials offered mixed messaging over whether countries can negotiate their way out of tariffs, or if the levies are here to stay. Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Barack Obama, said the administration “doesn’t have a coherent message on why it’s implementing the largest tax increase” seen in the US in 50 years.
President Donald Trump’s trade plan could cause a repeat of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs from 1930 that worsened the Great Depression, former Federal Reserve official James Bullard warned on Monday.
Economists widely blame the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act with making the Great Depression worse than it had to be. The act surged tariffs on US imports to protect workers. A half-century later, the infamous legislation was featured in an iconic scene in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Bullard, who now serves as dean of Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business, told CNBC that Trump’s tariffs are setting up a situation where “you could get a dramatic downturn in the economy.”
Bullard added, however, that this does not have to be a repeat and noted that it’s not clear the tariffs will even stay in place.
President Donald Trump took to social media Monday to argue that the US is in a strong economic position, despite the fact that the US and global markets have tanked.
The president claimed that the country will earn billions of dollars from the tariffs he placed on other countries, even as the stock market faces its worst start to a presidential term in modern history.
Trump on Sunday aboard Air Force One said he does not want “anything to go down,” but stressed “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” with the administration sending mixed signals on whether his trade policies are open for negotiation.
The sweeping tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump last week are set to add to the pain inflicted on US farmers by the tariffs imposed during his first term, a union boss has warned.
He added that farmers “haven’t gotten (those) markets back yet and now he’s picking on Canada and Mexico and China.” Farmers are being “held down to almost surf levels, just barely getting by,” he said.
“We raise thousands and thousands of acres of corn and soybeans and wheat and other products and we export just about half of what we raise in the United States,” he said.
Farmers often receive government funding to protect them when prices fall due to weather or market fluctuations – but in 2018 they needed bailing out to protect them from the Trump administration’s trade policies. During Trump’s first term, the government spent billions of dollars bailing out farmers feeling the pinch from the president’s trade war.
Over the weekend, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was unable to clearly state whether Trump’s new tariffs are here to stay, or whether there was room for deals.
Rollins indicated there could be support for farmers affected by the most recent tariffs, pointing to the previous relief during Trump’s first term.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has issued a blunt warning about President Donald Trump’s tariff policy: It threatens to raise prices, drive the global economy into a downturn and weaken America’s standing in the world.
Dimon said America’s “extraordinary standing” in the world was built on the strength of its economy, military and morals. But tariffs and Trump’s “America First” foreign policy could undermine that standing.
Despite a recent plunge in markets, stocks could tumble much farther still, Dimon argued. The US stock market is set to open in bear market territory after hitting a record high less than seven weeks ago, on February 19 – the second-fastest peak-to-bear market shift in history (the fastest occurred during the 2020 pandemic).
US President Donald Trump and his tariffs have taken a bull stock market and are on the precipice of turning it into a bear faster than any president has overseen in modern history.
If the stock market closes in bear territory – a drop of 20% from a recent peak – it would be the earliest in a new administration a bull market has turned into a bear in the history of the S&P 500, which dates back to 1957.
These same tariffs may also take a booming economy and turn it into a recession.
Read more about the state of the stock market today here.
We know there’s a lot of chatter about the impact of the tariffs, and one word being thrown around is recession.
So, what is a recession? And why are economists concerned the world may be impacted by it?
The traditional (and official) definition of a US recession is “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”
That’s according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit organization has a very important role, when it comes to these downturns: Its Business Cycle Dating Committee is the official designator of peaks, troughs, expansions, contractions — and yes, recessions — in the business cycle.
The committee, in making its recession determination, uses three criteria: depth, diffusion and duration.
This is where it gets a little squishy.
While each of those need to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions in one of those areas can offset weaker conditions in the others.
Also, it’s often the case that the US already is in a recession by the time the Business Cycle Dating Committee officially deems it so.
Prognosticators have turned to other gauges as potential recessionary indicators; however, they don’t always prove true.
The biggest rule of thumb or nonofficial recession indicator is the technical notion of back-to-back quarterly contractions in real gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic activity.
As the European Union seeks to respond to the punishing 20% tariff the White House has placed on its exports, the bloc could negotiate with the United States on issues of energy security and military trade, a Latvian official said Monday.
Artjom Uršulskis, parliamentary secretary of Latvia’s foreign ministry, hinted at where the EU is looking to negotiate with the US, in comments to reporters ahead of a meeting of EU trade ministers.
One area the EU could target is US services, rather than just goods – which would punish US tech giants. But Uršulskis said this would be the wrong focus.
Goldman Sachs is the latest Wall Street bank to warn that US President Donald Trump’s trade war could crash the US economy into a damaging recession.
As financial markets plunged, Goldman Sachs economists delivered a report to clients titled “Countdown to Recession” that slashed their 2025 GDP forecast to 0.5% and raised their 12-month recession probability from 35% to 45%.
The investment bank cited the “sharp tightening in financial conditions, foreign consumer boycotts, and a continued spike in policy uncertainty that is likely to depress capital spending by more than we had previously assumed.”
The new recession warning from Goldman Sachs is lower than the 60% recession forecast from JPMorgan Chase last week. But that’s because Goldman’s forecast hinges on an assumption that Trump won’t allow all his threatened tariffs to kick in.
In other words, if Trump doesn’t blink, Goldman Sachs believes a recession is likely on the cards.
The bank now expects the Fed to cut rates starting in June (versus July previously) followed by twice more later in the year. If a recession becomes more likely, Goldman said the Fed would likely slash interest rates by two full percentage points over the next year.
After Elon Musk said he was in favor of “zero tariffs” between the United States and European Union – in opposition to policies of the US president he helped elect – Germany’s economy minister said Musk was showing signs of “weakness” and “fear.”
“Yes, I read what Elon Musk said,” Robert Habeck said Monday, referring to Musk’s comments this weekend that he hopes for a “zero-tariff situation” between the US and EU.
“I think it’s a sign of weakness and maybe of fear, because the acting politics are completely different,” Habeck said as he arrived at a meeting of EU trade ministers.
“This is ridiculous, and the only interpretation I have is that he now sees that his own companies, but even the economies are going to crumble because of the mess they have made, so he’s afraid,” he added, referring to Tesla’s tanking stock price.
Habeck called for a return to the policies of globalization that had “served all economies” around the world, and especially the US.