Trump rolls out sweeping tariffs. Here’s what to know.

Editor’s note, August 7, 10:30 am ET: On August 7, Trump’s tariffs went into effect for about 90 countries. The story below was originally published on April 13.

President Donald Trump’s tariff plan has rattled Wall Street, alarmed the United States’ trading partners, and made Americans afraid of checking their retirement accounts.

Editor’s note, August 7, 10:30 am ET: On August 7, Trump’s tariffs went into effect for about 90 countries. The story below was originally published on April 2.

Since President Donald Trump announced a slate of new tariffs on about 90 countries last week, global financial markets have tumbled. False reports about a potential pause in tariffs gave Wall Street a brief moment of false hope on Monday, but the White House has only doubled down, threatening to add more tariffs on China. Economists have also raised the alarm, projecting that Trump’s tariffs have increased the odds of a recession.

President Donald Trump’s defenders often frame his trade policies as prioritizing economic development over the free market.

In their telling, America has an interest in manufacturing valuable goods domestically, even if producing such wares in the US is not maximally profitable right now. Our nation might not currently make semiconductors as well as Taiwan or electric vehicles as well as China. But if we protect our nascent chip and EV industries, they might eventually become globally competitive. And that could make America wealthier, as the international market for such technologies will be large and opportunities for productivity gains in those industries are significant.

Editor’s note, August 7, 10:30 am ET: On August 7, Trump’s tariffs went into effect for about 90 countries. The story below was originally published on April 2.

President Donald Trump has said that “tariff” is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.” And throughout his first months in office, he has given Americans plenty of cause for googling that word’s definition.

Cheap goods from China on Americans’ go-to websites — from Amazon to Temu — are suddenly way more expensive.

That’s because the “de minimis” exemption for Chinese imports expired Friday by order of President Donald Trump. Under that exemption, shipments of goods whose total value is less than $800 were exempt from tariffs — a threshold that included for most purchases individual Americans make from China.

President Donald Trump warned of short-term pain resulting from his tariffs.

That pain has arrived in the form of higher prices — and it might not be temporary.

In recent days, Donald Trump has signaled eagerness to reach a trade agreement with China. The president said Tuesday that his 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports will “come down substantially” in the near future.

On Thursday, Trump said that his administration is already negotiating with China over trade, saying, “They had a meeting this morning.” Asked who precisely had a meeting, Trump told reporters, “it doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is.”

If anything is safe from the economic chaos caused by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it’s probably gold — or at least that’s what investors seem to think.

The price of gold has increased rapidly in the months since Trump took office, surging particularly since his March 2 announcement of a baseline 10 percent tariff on all US imports. This week, it briefly climbed to a record high of more than $3,500 per ounce during day trading, before closing slightly lower than that.

It’s not just the stock market.

In the few weeks since President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs, a series of indicators from across the economy suggest anxiety — or even outright panic — is in the economic driver’s seat.

Less than six months ago, after an inappropriate amount of research, I bought a new toaster for $30. My old toaster had died, as old toasters do, and I wanted to buy one cheap enough that I wouldn’t be mad when I had to replace it. If President Donald Trump’s current 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports remains in effect, the same toaster could cost me about $75 when that time comes.

You’ve probably seen a lot of these Trump tariff calculations for consumer products lately — especially those for goods made in China, from iPhones to baby products. In many instances, it’s hard to even guess how much things will cost because the tariff structure has become so complicated and is constantly changing.

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country,” President Donald Trump promised on “Liberation Day,” as he announced tariffs that have shocked global markets and set the country on course for a recession. “We will supercharge our domestic industrial base. We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers, and ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”

This has long been the key argument behind protectionist policies like Trump’s: They will bring manufacturing jobs back to America. It’s a claim popular not just on the right, but with pro-tariff Democrats and labor unions, too. Chris Deluzio, a House Democrat from western Pennsylvania (a traditional hotbed of protectionism), has urged his party to “embrace tariffs as one component of a broader industrial strategy to revitalize American manufacturing and make whole communities that have been hollowed out by decades of bad trade policy.”

The United States and China are locked in an economic war. They’ve levied tit-for-tat tariffs on each other, and there’s little sign of detente.

President Donald Trump said in a statement Tuesday that “The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them.”

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff policy, in which he declared trade war on the entire world simultaneously, was a bizarre and nonsensical undertaking, seemingly shaped only by the president’s own whims.

But since that initial announcement, the policy has been modified to bear at least a little bit more of a resemblance to what Trump’s more sophisticated advisers wanted.

When President Donald Trump unveiled tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories early this month, there was one place that was conspicuously left off the list: Russia.

Initially, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios that Russia had been excluded because US sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade.” But this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“Tariffs or this?” mused an X user on April 5, the day after President Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs sent the Dow Jones spinning into its biggest drop since the height of the pandemic.

The “this” in question was a TikTok video from last summer in which the all-women executive team of an Australian skin care company playfully sang and danced around their office. Faced with the option of a woman joking about being a “Gen Z boss” and probable economic ruin: “Tariffs,” the X user concluded.

In between jokes about identity politics and the taste of urine, massively popular podcaster Theo Von and his most recent show guest debated President Donald Trump’s tariff and trade policy. Would rising prices in the short term justify the supposed return of manufacturing jobs to America? Or would automation and artificial intelligence end up vaporizing those jobs as well?

“Here’s the thing with tariffs. Is the goal of tariffs…if it costs more for people to bring their products in, then they’ll build them here?” Von asked comedian Mark Normand on the April 7 episode of This Past Weekend With Theo Von.

For many years, Donald Trump has viewed unpredictability as one of his greatest negotiating assets.

He believes deliberately acting “crazy,” as he reportedly told aides in 2017, is a highly effective way to win concessions in advance of a deal. As I’ve written, this is akin to what President Richard Nixon dubbed the “madman theory” — that if he convinced foreign leaders he was willing to do unthinkable things, they’d back down out of fear.

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.

Having a baby is expensive.

Much has apparently changed in the last 24 hours in the US economy.

The S&P 500 opened Wednesday more than 10 percent down since President Donald Trump announced his sweeping tariffs on American imports. Goldman Sachs had raised its recession odds to 45 percent. Investors believed they no longer had the ear of the president. US Treasury yields were spiking, a signal that investors’ confidence in the strength of the American economy was wavering.

President Donald Trump has launched a global trade war, raising prices and tanking stocks in the process. His approval rating is in free fall. And yet, somehow, the Democrats are in disarray.

Or at least, they are bitterly bickering over what their party’s stance on trade should be.

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.

Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m breaking down President Donald Trump’s wild afternoon of trade moves.

President Donald Trump beat a partial — and possibly temporary — retreat from the most radical version of his trade agenda Wednesday.

One week ago, he vowed to impose massive new tariffs on virtually all imports from nearly all countries. Although rates varied by nation, many countries faced tariffs of more than 30 percent. Trump branded these duties “reciprocal tariffs,” claiming (falsely) that they mirrored foreign nations’ trade barriers to American goods. The policy triggered a stock market collapse and upended countless businesses dependent on foreign suppliers for goods or parts.

After a week of intensifying market turmoil, President Donald Trump stepped back from the brink of financial crisis Wednesday, announcing a 90-day “pause” on the exorbitant tariff levels he’d imposed on dozens of countries.

It was not a total climbdown: Trump intensified a trade war with China by hiking its tariff level up to 125 percent. And he is also keeping in place a 10 percent tariff for other countries. (Details on exactly which countries remained murky as of mid-Wednesday afternoon.)

President Donald Trump has been angry about trade for nearly half a century — and throughout all that time, he’s kept on making the same complaint.

The problem, he says, is that the US has trade deficits with other countries. He believes that, if we buy more from a country than they buy from us, the other country is “beating” us. And he wants to “beat” them instead.

The US stock market has lost trillions of dollars in value in the days since President Donald Trump announced major tariffs on American imports. On Tuesday afternoon, the S&P 500 was down more than 11 percent since Trump’s announcement of the tariffs. Global stock indices, such as the Japanese Nikkei and the German DAX, have also plunged as the tariffs disrupt world trade.

Stocks recovered somewhat after Trump indicated that he’s in negotiations — including with countries such as Japan and South Korea — to broker what his press secretary Karoline Leavitt called “tailor-made” trade deals. But the question is how quickly those deals can get done without wreaking further havoc on financial markets.