Tariffs live: US central bank threatens to step in as Trump still defends

China has said it will ignore further levies by US president Donald Trump after Beijing hiked levies on American goods to 125 per cent.

“Even if the US imposes higher tariffs, it would no longer make economic sense and ultimately go down as a joke in world economic history,” China’s finance ministry said yesterday.

“Given that it’s already impossible for the Chinese market to accept US imports at the current tariff level if the United States imposes further tariffs on Chinese products, China will ignore it,” it said.

President Donald Trump had perhaps one of the biggest setbacks for his agenda this week. After a whipsaw performance in overnight markets on Tuesday evening, Trump blinked and announced a 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariffs.”

Trump himself admitted this came after markets got “a little queasy.” It also came after JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, arguably the most respected executive on Wall Street, warned that a recession was likely. It turns out that even as the Republican Congress and the courts largely stand by, one thing can grind Trump to a halt: the bond market, which went haywire on Tuesday evening.

But Trump did not just make Wall Street sick. The University of Michigan’s survey of consumers found that consumer sentiment dropped for the fourth straight month in a row, 30 percent since December 2024.

And this does not erase the fact that Trump still slapped on 145 percent duties on China and an across-the-board tariff of 10 percent for other countries.

Senior Senate Democrats have written a letter asking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether president Donald Trump engaged in insider trading and market manipulation.

Mr Trump sent financial markets into a tailspin by announcing sweeping import taxes on dozens of trade partners last week, before rolling them back to 10 per cent last Wednesday for 90 days.

The call for investigation was prompted by Mr Trump’s statement on Wednesday when he claimed that it was a “great time to buy” stocks. Shortly after, he paused most of the tariffs imposed last week.

“We urge the SEC to investigate whether the tariff announcements, which caused the market crash and subsequent partial recovery, enriched administration insiders and friends at the expense of the American public and whether any insiders, including the president’s family, had prior knowledge of the tariff pause that they abused to make stock trades ahead of the president’s announcement,” said the letter.

House minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier that Democrats “need to get to the bottom of the possible stock manipulation that is unfolding before the American people, including what if any advanced knowledge did members of the House Republican Conference…