Wall Street tumbles again after China announces retaliatory 34% tariffs on US goods – business live

It’s just two days since Donald Trump launched his extraordinary tariff assault on the world in a bid to rebuild the US economy and roll back an era of globalization. But already shopkeepers are bracing for recession, and their customers spending less, as they prepare to increase prices.

“We’re going to have to put our prices up and people aren’t going to like it,” said Ian Anderson, store manager at Tea and Sympathy, a UK grocery store, restaurant and fish-and-chip shop stalwart in Manhattan’s West Village.

Business costs have already increased significant, he noted. But tariffs would add to the load. “We’ve survived so far because we sell base products – cakes, scones, hot cross buns, mince pies. If it was just imports, we’d struggle.”

Most retailers in the New York neighborhood agreed on one thing: the tariffs announced this week would contribute to business environment anxieties that have been mounting for years, from the 2008 economic crisis, to the initial wave of tariffs under Trump’s first administration, the Covid pandemic and the high inflation that followed.

But many also said it was too soon to tell if Trump’s tariffs would ultimately go into effect – or if they were just the opening salvo of his latest shock-and-awe style of dealmaking. A day earlier, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, encouraged countries around the world to refrain from retaliating against the US.