Trump pauses higher tariffs for most countries for 90 days – but increases those on China to 125%
Donald Trump has paused his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on most of America’s trading partners for 90 days – while increasing those on China to 125%.
There have been fears of a global recession and stock markets around the world had plummeted after Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on Wednesday 2 April.
However, the S&P 500 stock index jumped 9.5% and global markets bounced back following Mr Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that the increased tariffs on nearly all trading partners would now be paused.
Tariffs latest: Trump gives reasons for pausing some tariffs
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Mr Trump said the “90-day pause” was for the “more than 75 countries” who had not retaliated against his tariffs “in any way”.
He added that during this period they would still have to pay a “substantially lowered” 10% tariff, which is “effective immediately”.
It is lower than the 20% tariff that Mr Trump had set for goods from the European Union, 24% on imports from Japan and 25% on products from South Korea.
The UK was already going to face a blanket 10% tariff under the new system.
Mr Trump said the increased 125% tariff on imported goods from China was “effective immediately”.
He added: “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realise that the days of ripping off the USA, and other countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.”
Hours after Mr Trump announced the pause on tariffs for most countries, a White House official clarified that this did not apply to the 25% duties imposed on some US imports from Mexico and Canada.
The tariffs were first announced in February and Mexico and Canada were not included in the “Liberation Day” announcements.
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Donald Trump says China ‘wants to make a deal’
Hours before the 125% tariff on China was revealed, Beijing said it was increasing tariffs on US goods by 50%.
It meant tariffs of 84% would be enforced on US goods – up from the 34% China had previously planned.
Mr Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office. Pic: Reuters
China ‘want to make a deal’
Asked why he posted “BE COOL” on Truth Social hours before announcing his tariff pause, Mr Trump told reporters at the White House: “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.”
“They were getting yippy, you know, were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” he added.
Mr Trump continued: “China wants to make a deal, they just don’t know how to go about it.
“[They’re] quite the proud people, and President Xi is a proud man. I know him very well, and they don’t know quite how to go about it, but they’ll figure it out.
“They’re in the process of figuring out, but they want to make a deal.”
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the walk back was part of a grand negotiating strategy by Mr Trump.
“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” she said, adding that the news media “clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here”.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also insisted Mr Trump had strengthened his hand through his tariffs.
“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” he said.
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Mr Bessent said Mr Trump decided to raise tariffs on China because Beijing hadn’t reached out to the US and instead increased its own levies on US goods.
Downing Street said that the UK will “coolly and calmly” continue its negotiations with the US.
A Number 10 spokeswoman said: “A trade war is in nobody’s interests. We don’t want any tariffs at all, so for jobs and livelihoods across the UK, we will coolly and calmly continue to negotiate in Britain’s interests.”
It could be diplomatic dynamite.
The first meeting between a sitting US and Russian president in more than four years, following one of the bleakest periods in the history of their countries’ bilateral relations.
But a Putin–Trump summit does not necessarily mean there will be a ceasefire.
Ukraine war latest: Kremlin aide’s full statement on Trump-Putin talks
On the one hand, it could signal that a point of agreement has been reached and a face-to-face meeting is needed to seal the deal.
That has always been Russia’s stance. It’s consistently said it would only meet at a presidential level if there’s something to agree on.
On the other hand, there might not be anything substantive. It might just be for show.
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‘Good chance’ Trump will meet Putin soon
It might just be the latest attempt by the Kremlin to diffuse Donald Trump’s anger and dodge his deadline to end the war by Friday or face sanctions.
It would give Trump something that can be presented as progress, but in reality, it delivers anything but.
After all, there has certainly not been any sign that Moscow is willing to soften its negotiating position or step back from its goals on the battlefield.
Tellingly, perhaps, it’s this latter view which has been taken by some of the Russian press on Thursday.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have not met face to face since the US president returned to the White House. File pic: Reuters
“Putin won” is the headline in Moskovsky Komsomolets regarding the Kremlin leader’s meeting with Witkoff.
The state-run tabloid quotes a political scientist, Marat Bashirov, who claims Putin “bought time” ahead of Friday’s deadline.
“It is noteworthy that in his rhetoric [on sanctions] Trump did not mention Russia at all,” the paper notes.
Komsomolskaya Pravda is similarly dismissive.
“Donald Trump has two simple interests in connection with Ukraine: to earn money for America, and political whistles and the Nobel Peace Prize for himself,” it says.
“Russia has its own interests,” it adds, “securing them is what Vladimir Putin will seek at a meeting with Trump.”
At this stage, the most likely location is the United Arab Emirates. Putin met the country’s president in the Kremlin today, and afterwards said it would be a “suitable location”. It felt like a strong hint.
And the UAE certainly makes sense.
It’s played mediator for a number of the prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine; it has good relations with the US (and was one of Trump’s stops on his recent Middle East tour); and most importantly for Moscow, it’s not a member of the International Criminal Court. So Putin doesn’t have to worry about being arrested.
But if NBC’s reports are correct, that a Putin-Trump summit is conditional on the Russian president meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then the summit may not happen at all.
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Until now, Putin has refused to meet Zelenskyy, despite numerous demands from Kyiv, because he views him as illegitimate.
The Kremlin said the prospect of a trilateral meeting between the leaders was mentioned by Witkoff on Wednesday, but the proposal was left “completely without comment” by Russia.
GPT-5, the long-awaited upgrade to the ChatGPT AI chatbot, has been released by its maker OpenAI.
It has been one of the most highly anticipated launches in Silicon Valley after OpenAI’s first offering ChatGPT – powered by its GPT-3 model – kick-started the current AI boom in late 2022.
“GPT-3 sort of felt like talking to a high school student,” said Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive.
“GPT-4, maybe it was like talking to a college student. But with GPT-5, now it’s like talking to an expert, a PhD-level expert in anything, any area you need, on demand.”
At the launch event, OpenAI claimed the new chatbot, which will be released to all ChatGPT users on Thursday, was more than a simple upgrade to its previous offerings.
According to OpenAI, the new model exceeds the chatbot competition from the likes of Google, X and Antropic on “benchmarks” – standardised tests used to rank models.
OpenAI claims it has been designed to be easier and more natural to communicate with, better at writing prose and advanced computer code, solving academic questions from mathematics to law, assisting with healthcare-related questions, as well as being safer than its predecessors.
“It’s an incredible superpower on demand,” claimed Mr Altman.
GPT-5. Pic: OpenAI
The model is also more intelligent in how it uses its own brain power – and therefore an expensive computing resource – according to OpenAI.
It is a hybrid of previous chatbots and slower, more computing-intensive “reasoning” models like OpenAI’s Deep Research.
Based on a user’s request, the model will decide how much “thinking” is required before answering, rather than requiring the user to switch between different models.
GPT-5. Pic: OpenAI
Although AI enthusiasts who had been expecting GPT-5 to represent “artificial general intelligence [AGI]” will be disappointed.
Despite this being OpenAI’s stated goal, Mr Altman billed GPT-5 as a “major upgrade” to GPT-4 and a “significant step along the path to AGI”.
But they’re clearly not there yet.
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A real test of GPT-5 will be whether it sells.
OpenAI is projected to spend $8bn (£6bn) this year, on top of $5bn (£3.7bn) last year, and while it is expected to make a profit this year, the business case for increasingly powerful AI models is still not clear to many investors.
Given a single training run for GPT-5 is rumoured to have cost $500m (£373m), there will be an expectation the new model is significantly more useful to business users.
Despite a very slick demonstration of its coding skills at the launch presentation, where it built an online language learning game in seconds, GPT-5 will have to prove its worth for professional coding.
Many in the tech industry prefer Anthropic AI’s Claude model to write code. OpenAI and its investors will be hoping GPT-5 changes that.
AI experts will also be testing GPT-5’s tendency to “hallucinate”, an issue OpenAI claims to have improved with GPT-5.
But erroneous or bizarre answers are a problem that dogs all large generative AI models.
“Shiny things are always fun to play with, and I fully expect GPT-5 to be the shiniest so far,” said Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist at New York University and AI commentator.
“But that doesn’t mean that it is a critical step on the optimal path to AI that we can trust,” Mr Marcus added in a post.
Dean Cain has been branded the “worst superman ever” as he announced he will join the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “ASAP”.
The 59-year-old, who was cast as Superman in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, announced he had joined the team amid the federal agency’s unprecedented immigration raids.
He told Fox News on Wednesday his recruitment video on Instagram had gone viral and since then, “I have spoken with some of the officials over at ICE and I will be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP”.
“You can defend your homeland and get great benefits,” he said in the Instagram post where he appealed for his followers to join ICE.
Speaking with the Superman theme song in the background, he said “hundreds of thousands of criminals” had been arrested since US President Donald Trump took office.
He then told his followers they would get a series of benefits if they joined ICE, including a $50,000 (£37,407) signing bonus and student loan repayment.
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“If you want to help save America ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America’s streets,” he said, before adding: “I voted for that.”
ICE agents are under pressure from the White House to boost their deportation numbers in line with Mr Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
Cain’s post on Instagram received some backlash, with one user commenting: “Worst superman ever”.
Another said: “Shame on you Dean – that’s the most un-Superman thing you could possibly advocate.”
One fan turned against him and said: “Until I saw this I was such a fan. What a sad human being you must be.”
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