• President Trump is set to unveil potentially the biggest hike in U.S. import duties since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act nearly a century ago, and reports suggest staffers are still jockeying for the chance to change his mind up until the final moment.

President Donald Trump and his economic team had not yet decided on the size and shape of his “Liberation Day” tariff plan 24 hours before it was set to be revealed in a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, according to reports.

Bloomberg cited anonymous sources in the administration as saying Trump was undecided whether to impose a simple, easy-to-understand flat tariff (of 20%, for example). The alternative is to opt for a more targeted approach where hikes are tailored to hurt more protectionist trading partners, such as the European Union, the most. 

The arrival of broad punitive tariffs—expected to take effect within 24 hours of their announcement—could force companies to scramble to redirect cargo already en route to the United States.  

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “with his trade and tariff team right now perfecting it to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker.”

Foreign leaders continued to attempt to influence Trump’s plan and carve out exceptions for their countries as the Wednesday deadline approached. 

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unilaterally dropped all duties levied against U.S. goods.

This came without the previous negotiation of a free trade agreement, meaning all World Trade Organization members are now within their rights to sue Israel under the organization’s bylaws in order to win similar treatment.

The White House did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment by press time.

‘2025 tariffs could be so much more devastating than Smoot-Hawley’

Trump’s late tweaks to any tariff announcements speak to the complexity of rewriting long-existing trade relations and uprooting entire supply chains.

Financial markets have not been able to predict the likely effects on gross domestic product, inflation, or asset prices.

On Sunday, Goldman Sachs hiked its probability for a U.S. recession from 20% to 35%, as planned investments are postponed and the economy risks grinding to a halt.

Investors sent gold to a new all-time high above $3,000 an ounce on Tuesday, fueling fears about what the changes will mean for U.S. stock and currency markets.

Spencer Hakimian, founder of New York macro hedge fund Tolou Capital, also warned that tariffs could backfire worse than the punitive duties that deepened the Great Depression.

“The economic damage from the 2025 tariffs could be so much more devastating than Smoot-Hawley,” he wrote. “The economy is five times more exposed to tariffs today than it was 100 years ago when we learned our lesson.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• President Donald Trump announced long-awaited reciprocal tariffs on America’s trading partners Wednesday. The U.S. will impose tariffs at about half of what other countries do, with a minimum 10% tax. “We subsidize a lot of countries,” the president said. “We’re not taking it anymore.”

It’s a day of tariffs that President Donald Trump vowed would “make America wealthy again.”

Trump on Wednesday announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs with the U.S.’ trading partners, to be set at about half of what other countries are charging America. The U.S. will impose a 10% minimum tariff, too, Trump said in a speech from the White House Rose Garden.

“They do it to us, we do it to them,” Trump said during the event, saying it was America’s turn to prosper. 

As the president delivered his speech, he held up a sign dense with charts, and shared specific examples: China taxes the United States 67%—a number Trump said accounted for currency manipulation—so the United States will tax China 34%. The European Union’s total levies against the U.S. amount to 39%, so the U.S. will tax about 20%, Trump said. The U.S. will impose 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 32% on Taiwan. 

“None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries,” he said. “I say that, friend and foe, and in many cases the friend is worse than the foe.”

Trump also reaffirmed that he would place 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars and parts, effective midnight. “We subsidize a lot of countries,” the president said, blaming the trade deficit for the U.S.’ debt problem. “We’re not taking it anymore.” 

Even before Trump’s Election Day victory, some economists warned the tariffs he promised on the campaign trail could be inflationary. Ever since, his on-again, off-again tariffs and the threat of a global trade war not only pushed the S&P 500 into correction territory and tanked consumer sentiment, but set off recession calls from big banks and others in the finance world. It’s kept the central bank in wait-and-see mode, too, when it comes to interest rates. 

The fear surrounding the levies is that when companies face an extra tax on imported goods, they tend to pass those costs on to consumers. Americans are still suffering from exorbitant prices after inflation hit a scorching-hot four-decade high almost three years ago. The Federal Reserve itself sees tariff-induced inflation coming, even if it may be transitory. If business and consumer spending declines as a result of price hikes, it could slow economic activity and even usher in stagflation—a mix of stagnant growth and elevated inflation. One think tank recently called tariffs “a recipe for making Americans worse off.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Amazon has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump administration official said Wednesday, in an eleventh-hour pitch as a U.S. ban on the platform is set to go into effect Saturday.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Amazon offer was made in a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

The New York Times first reported on the bid.

President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day gave the platform a reprieve, barreling past a law that had been upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.

Under the law, TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance is required to sell the platform to an approved buyer or take it offline in the United States. Trump has suggested he could further extend the pause on the ban, but he has also said he expects a deal to be forged by Saturday.

Amazon declined to comment. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The existence of an Amazon bid surfaced as Trump was scheduled on Wednesday to meet with senior officials to discuss the coming deadline for a TikTok sale.

Although it’s unclear if ByteDance plans to sell TikTok, several possible bidders have come forward in the past few months. Among the possible investors are the software company Oracle and the investment firm Blackstone. Oracle announced in 2020 that it had a 12.5% stake in TikTok Global after securing its business as the app’s cloud technology provider.

In January, the artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI presented ByteDance with a merger proposal that would combine Perplexity’s business with TikTok’s U.S. operation. Last month, the company outlined its approach to rebuilding TikTok in a blog post, arguing that it is “singularly positioned to rebuild the TikTok algorithm without creating a monopoly.”

“Any acquisition by a consortium of investors could in effect keep ByteDance in control of the algorithm, while any acquisition by a competitor would likely create a monopoly in the short form video and information space,” Perplexity said in its post.

The company said it would remake the TikTok algorithm and ensure that infrastructure would be developed and maintained in “American data centers with American oversight, ensuring alignment with domestic privacy standards and regulations.”

Other potential bidders include a consortium organized by billionaire businessman Frank McCourt, which recently recruited Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as a strategic adviser. Investors in the consortium say they’ve offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash for TikTok’s U.S. platform. Jesse Tinsley, the founder of the payroll firm Employer.com, says he too has organized a consortium and is offering ByteDance more than $30 billion for the platform. Wyoming small business owner Reid Rasner has also announced that he offered ByteDance roughly $47.5 billion.

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian government. TikTok said it has never done that and would not do so if asked. The U.S. government has not provided evidence of that happening.

Trump has millions of followers on TikTok and has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters.

During his first term, he took a more skeptical view of TikTok and issued executive orders banning dealings with ByteDance as well as the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Source link