U.S. President Donald Trump said he may allow individual exceptions to the 10% tariff for most trading partners, although he considers the rate the minimum for countries seeking to negotiate with Washington, Bloomberg reported Saturday.
“There may be some exceptions for obvious reasons, but I would say 10% is the minimum,” Trump told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One en route to Florida. He did not specify what the reasons were, nor did he announce any new fare changes.
The announcement came after fare increases for dozens of countries announced in the week. Some were later postponed due to negative market reactions. China was hit with duties of 145%, while a prime rate of 10% has so far been applied to most nations.
“Despite this, the average duty rate in the U.S. could reach historic highs. Beijing, in response to Washington’s actions, raised tariffs on US goods to 125%. China said it will not respond to further steps, but is preparing other measures,” the report said.
Trump said at the same time that “the market is stable” and the dollar will remain “the currency of choice”. He also expressed confidence that the trade standoff with China could end positively.
US President Donald Trump has expressed confidence that Greenland will become American.
“We will get Greenland – 100%,” he said in an interview with NBC News.
According to the American president, “there is a good possibility that it will be possible to do it without the use of military force, but you can’t rule anything out.”
Asked what signal the Greenland acquisition would send to Russia and the rest of the world, Trump said, “I don’t really think about it. I don’t really care. Greenland is a totally separate issue, totally different. It’s international peace. It’s international security and strength.”
The other day, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance visited Greenland. According to him, the island is likely to gain independence from Denmark in the future, after which the US will start working with Greenland to establish bilateral relations.
Earlier, Trump repeatedly said that he would like to see Greenland as part of the United States.
Both Russia and China are interested in establishing relations with the United States, US President Donald Trump said on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday.
Asked by the host if it was possible to believe that Putin really wants this, while he is influenced by “his close friend, President Xi of China,” Trump replied that “we have our own discussions with President Xi of China, and he also wants to make a deal and we want to make a deal with him. And we will do that.”
Trump blamed the Barack Obama administration for the rapprochement between Russia and China.
“Obama really forced them together through energy and bad energy policy. And when he did so many different things, he forced (them) into a marriage that should never have happened. Because it’s unnatural. And for one reason: Russia has a huge territory, a lot of land, and China doesn’t have enough land. Russia has a much smaller population than China. And it’s natural, it’s always been a natural hostile situation,” Trump said.
“Maybe they’re friendly now, but we’re going to be friendly with both of them. I think we will be friendly with both. China desperately needs us in terms of trade, but we have to equalize the deficit,” he added.
“I think President Xi would like to reach an agreement, and I think Russia would like to reach an agreement with the United States,” Trump summarized.
By standard measures such as job and GDP growth and the stock market, the US economy was in excellent shape
Donald Trump keeps saying he inherited a terrible economy from Joe Biden and many Americans believe him, even though that’s not true. During his White House marketing event for Tesla on Tuesday, Trump said the US and its economy “went to hell” under Biden. Last week, in his national address to Congress, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”
But the truth is that by standard economic measures, the US economy was in excellent shape when Biden turned over the White House keys to Trump, even though most Americans, upset about inflation, told pollsters the economy was in poor shape.
When Biden left office, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and during Biden’s four years in office, the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump has repeatedly railed against the high inflation under Biden, but the fact is that by the time Biden left office, the inflation rate had fallen to just 2.9% – down more than two-thirds from its peak and near the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.
Stocks tank and egg prices soar under Trump
Not only that, the nation’s GDP growth has been impressive, rising at a solid 3.1% rate at the end of Biden’s term. Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations. Shortly before election day, the Economist magazine ran a story saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.
Trump often says job growth under Biden was terrible, but the fact is that the US added 16.6m jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than during any four-year term of any previous US president. Under Trump, job growth was far worse – during his first four-year term, the nation lost 2.7m jobs overall, making Trump’s presidency the first since Herbert Hoover’s during which the nation suffered a net loss in jobs. The pandemic was largely responsible for this, but even during Trump’s first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, job growth was only half as fast as it was under Biden.
Recently, Trump has repeatedly boasted how his tariffs will bring back manufacturing. Trump fails to note, however, that Biden had considerable success in bringing bring back manufacturing and factory jobs. Under most recent presidents, the US lost manufacturing jobs, but under Biden, the nation gained an impressive 750,000 factory jobs, the most under any president since the 1970s. A big reason for this was that as a result of Biden’s green jobs legislation and the Chips Act to boost semiconductor production, manufacturing investment boomed, more than doubling during Biden’s four years in office.
Biden took considerable pride about how the economy performed under him, even though he failed to persuade most Americans that the it was doing well. In December, Biden wrote: “Incomes are up by nearly $4,000 adjusted for inflation [since he took office], and unions have won wage increases from 25% to 60% in industries like autos, ports, aerospace, and trucking. We’ve seen 20 million applications to start small businesses. Our economy has grown 3% per year on average the last four years – faster than any other advanced economy. Domestic energy production is at a record high.”
Many economists vigorously disagree with Trump’s claim that he inherited a poor economy. Paul Krugman wrote that in January, when Biden left office, the US had what was “very close to a Goldilocks economy, in which everything is more or less just right”. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, had even more glowing words. “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” he said. “The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”
Trump pays attention to one measure of the economy above all others: how the stock market is doing. During Biden’s four years, Wall Street did very well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 39% and the S&P 500 soared by 55.7%, including a 28% jump during 2024. In contrast, the stock market is down overall since Trump took office as investors have grown alarmed about the president’s tariff war against the US’s trading partners.
To be sure, there were some serious economic problems under Biden. Housing affordability was a major problem, and inflation rose to uncomfortable levels. The spike in prices was caused largely by two factors: the pandemic, which gave rise to worldwide supply chain problems, and Putin’s war in Ukraine, which pushed up food and fuel prices. But Trump, in denouncing Biden on inflation, ignores all that.
As Trump’s trade war spooks the markets and makes nervous CEOs rethink their investment plans, many economists are saying it’s more and more likely the US will stumble into recession this year.
Trump has a long history of refusing to accept blame for mistakes and problems, and by repeatedly claiming he inherited a horrible economy, he seems to be laying the groundwork to blame Biden if the country slides into a painful recession.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/16/trump-biden-economy
President of the United States Donald Trump has promised that on Monday, March 17, there will be news about the ceasefire talks with Ukraine and Russia. He said this in an interview with journalist Sheryl Attkisson, answering a question about his communication with Putin.
“We are dealing with him, and I think it’s a reasonable thing to do. The situation is very complicated, you know, it’s a bloody, terrible war. I think everything is going well. You know, we have a ceasefire agreement with the Ukrainians. And we are trying to get it with Russia. And I think that so far it’s gone well. We’ll know a little bit more on Monday. And I hope it goes well,” Trump said.
The US president said that Ukraine could “negotiate” to prevent war.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump said that elections should be held in Ukraine, as incumbent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy allegedly has a low rating, and that Russia allegedly wants the war to end.
“Now we have a situation in Ukraine where there have been no elections for a long time. Martial law has been introduced there. And the Ukrainian leader now, no matter how sad I am to say it, has 4% support,” Trump said at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago following the US-Russia talks in Riyadh on February 18.
According to him, it is not Russia that is demanding elections in Ukraine, but an “objective situation” because there have been no elections for a long time.
It is not yet clear where Trump got these sociological data from.
The US president also says that Russia is desperate to “stop” the war.
