Trump tariffs live: Vietnam, India and Israel reportedly in talks over new trade deals – as it happened (2025)

Much of the day has focused on the continued fallout from the major escalation of Trump’s trade war. Despite China clapping back to Trump’s tariffs with a 34% levy on US goods, Trump doubled down on his tariff policies (which he reportedly chose the formula for himself) saying “China played it wrong” and asserting: “My policies will never change.”

Here’s what else we covered:

• The markets closed at a steep slump today, ending a brutal week of decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 2,231.07 points, a 5% drop, while S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite each took 5.97% and 5.82% hits respectively.

• The supreme court has granted the Trump administration’s plea to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher-training money as part of its anti-DEI efforts.

• Agricultural products are among those severely slumping on the futures market on Friday, after China announced retaliatory tariffs on American exports

• Vietnam, India, and Israel are reportedly already in talks with the president as some countries work to negotiate new trade deals with the US to lessen the blow from tariffs.

• California’s governor Gavin Newsom is hoping to make some deals of his own, calling on international trading partners to negotiate tariffs with the Golden State directly.

• A federal judge ruled today that Columbia University must give students, including detained activist Mahmoud Khalil, 30 days’ notice before giving documents to Congress.

A federal judge ruled today that Columbia University must give students, including detained activist Mahmoud Khalil, 30 days’ notice before giving documents to Congress, the Associated Press reports.

The representative Tim Walberg, chair of the House education and workforce committee, celebrated the ruling, claiming that barring all document handovers would create obstacles in a congressional investigation into antisemitism on college campuses. The inquiry has targeted protesters and outspoken students who demonstrated against the violence against civilians by Israel in the war in Gaza, and the schools where protests took place.

Activists and lawyers had hoped for a stronger ruling that would stop the school from complying, but the decision enables the legal fight to continue.

“We now know that the government is testing the First Amendment’s limits, and the limits of what we as a society will allow,” the lawyers wrote in a statement. “We, as a collective, must stand together against these unlawful incursions into our protected speech.”

Even some of Republican members of Congress are beginning to feel uneasy about the economic backlash from his trade wars. Senator Ted Cruz, who has typically stood behind the president’s actions, said Friday that retaliatory tariffs like those the US is already seeing from China and other countries would be “a terrible outcome”, the New York Times reports.

“It would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the US economy if we had tariffs everywhere,” he said, speaking on his podcast.

Senator Chuck Grassley, meanwhile, introduced a bill this week to claw back trade policy authority from the executive branch. “For too long, Congress has delegated its clear authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce to the executive branch,” Grassley said in a statement. “Building on my previous efforts as Finance Committee chairman, I’m joining Sen. Cantwell to introduce the bipartisan Trade Review Act of 2025 to reassert Congress’ constitutional role and ensure Congress has a voice in trade policy.”

California’s governor Gavin Newsom is hoping to make some deals of his own, calling on international trading partners to negotiate tariffs with the Golden State directly.

“California is not Washington DC” the governor said in a written statement outlining that his state leads the US in agriculture and manufacturing and will be hit hard by Trump’s trade war. “As the fifth largest economy in the world, the Golden State will remain a steady, reliable partner for generations to come, no matter the turbulence coming out of Washington.”

In a lengthy announcement, the governor’s office highlighted that California is the largest importer in the US and its $3.9tn GDP IS 50% larger than the next largest state.

But, they added, roughly 40% of California imports come from Mexico, Canada and China, and the countries are also the top three export destinations.

“The magnitude of these tariffs on our North American allies, and the retaliation, will also result in major disruptions to cross-border supply chains, including the mutually beneficial co-production that takes place in the California-Baja mega-region,” the post reads, adding that this will also impact recovery from the devastating LA fires that roared through neighborhoods in January.

“With this announcement, Governor Newsom is directing his Administration to identify collaborative opportunities with trading partners that protect California’s economic interests – workers, manufacturers, and businesses – and the broader supply chains linked to the state’s economy.”

Some countries are working to negotiate new trade deals with the US, in an attempt to lessen the blow from tariffs, CNN reports.

Vietnam, India, and Israel are reportedly already in talks with the president.

From CNN:

The outreach between Trump and those countries – a small fraction of the targets of his steep, sweeping levies – is seen as a first wave of negotiations as countries strategize how to respond to Trump. Some, like China and Canada, have already announced plans to retaliate. The reciprocal tariffs will go into effect April 9 at 12:01 am ET, according to a senior White House official.”

While some in the administration maintain that economically disruptive move is part of a plan by the president to change global trading patterns, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he believes the tariffs will give him more power to make deals with leaders around the world.

“Every country has called us. That’s the beauty of what we do, we put ourselves in the driver’s seat,” Trump said. “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”

Agricultural products are among those severely slumping on the futures market on Friday, after China announced retaliatory tariffs on American exports, the New York Times reports.

From soybean contracts to cattle, oats to hogs, nearly all products in the agricultural sector were down.

Farmers across the US are feeling the impact of Trump’s policies, as funding cuts, tariffs, crackdowns on migrant workers and gutted USDA programs continue to cause chaos and wreck havoc.

Trump spoke to the agricultural sector in his address to Congress last month, warning that there would be “a little bit of an adjustment period”, but for farmers who often operate close to the edges – and who largely backed Trump in the 2024 election – fears are mounting.

“I think any farmer will tell you that we will take some short-term pain, but do not make this a long-term extended trade war, because that just won’t be good for agriculture or for the country in general,” Bob Hemesath, an Iowa farmer who grows corn and raises hogs told NBC News in March. “I know that this is the way President Trump believes he’s going to create better markets long term. I hope he’s correct. But my fear is that once you lose those markets to other suppliers, it’s very hard to get them back.”

The supreme court has granted the Trump administration’s plea to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher-training money as part of its anti-DEI efforts.

The justices ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday, granting an emergency request to stay a federal court order that would have required $65m in Department of Education funds to eight states to be reinstated.

The order came after eight states – California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin – sued over the withdrawn grants, which were supposed to fund teacher recruitment. The Trump administration canceled the funds, claiming the programs included DEI materials and were in violation of the president’s executive orders.

A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order against the administration in March, which would have stopped the termination of the grants in question until the lawsuit is resolved, finding that the states were likely to win their claim.

The administration made its case to the supreme court that federal courts were acting beyond their authority, “by ordering the Executive Branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back” Scotusblog reported back in March.

The justices split 5-4, with chief justice John Roberts joining the three liberal justices in dissent.

The markets closed at a steep slump today, ending a brutal week of decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 2,231.07 points, a 5% drop, while S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite each took 5.97% and 5.82% hits respectively.

“The bull market is dead,” Emily Bowersock Hill, CEO and founding partner at Bowersock Capital Partners told CNBC today, lamenting another rough day for Wallstreet in the wake of Trump’s tariffs, adding that “it was destroyed by ideologues and self-inflicted wounds”.

The declines are among the biggest seen since the Covid pandemic roiled economies around the globe in 2020.

CNBC also reports that the CBOE Volatility index, a measurement of investors’ fear, spiked above 40, “an extreme level seen only during rapid market declines”.

Much of the day has focused on the continued fallout from the major escalation of Trump’s trade war. Despite China clapping back to Trump’s tariffs with a 34% levy on US goods, Trump doubled down on his tariff policies (which he reportedly chose the formula for himself) saying “China played it wrong” and asserting: “My policies will never change.” His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also shrugged off market falls, insisting: “The markets will adjust.” Well they did adjust, in a way – Wall Street tumbled at the open after China’s retaliation. The Dow dropped over 2,000 points, its biggest drop since June 2020, and leaving the Nasdaq in bear market territory. Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, warned the global tariffs assault is set to raise prices and slow down economic growth, defying Trump’s demands for an immediate interest rate cut.

Leaders around the world are still scrambling with how to respond to the turmoil, with the EU calling US tariffs “damaging and unjustified”, and the likes of Vietnam, Cambodia and the state of California seeking exemptions. Automakers have already started shifting gears, while the likes of Apple, Nike and Amazon weigh the costs to their businesses – not for big oil though, who found themselves (checks notes) exempt from the tariffs package.

Away from global market chaos:

• A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must return to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order that he not be sent there. US district judge Paula Xinis told a Justice Department lawyer: “This was an illegal act. Congress said you can’t do it, and you did it anyway.” The government claims it has no way to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US, but Xinis has given them three days to do so.

  See Also

  The Signal chat exposes the administration’s incompetence – and its pecking order | Sidney Blumenthal

• A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order by halting the disbursement of hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) grants to states, and ordered Fema to disperse the funds.

• Trump extended the TikTok ban deadline – the second time the president will have delayed the ban or sale of the social media app to a non-Chinese buyer, and will punt the deadline to 75 days from now.

• Members of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Doge team arrived at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, the agency told Reuters, a signal it could become the latest US government unit to face job cuts.

That’s all from me, Lucy Campbell. My colleague Gabrielle Canon is here to steer you through the rest of the day’s news, so stay tuned.

Members of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team arrived at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, the agency told Reuters, a signal it could become the latest US government unit to face job cuts.

“Staff from the Department of Government Efficiency are currently working at Peace Corps headquarters and the agency is supporting their requests,” the agency said in a statement on Friday.

The Peace Corps, which sends volunteers across the globe to help countries with education, health and economic projects, had so far remained under the radar amid the cost-slashing drive of the Musk-led Doge.

The purpose of the visit was not immediately clear, but the arrival of Doge staff at an agency is often followed by layoffs. Fridays have become some of the most nerve-racking times for mass firings of civil servants since Donald Trump took office and established Doge.

Doge did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Since the Peace Corps was established in 1961 by then-president John F. Kennedy, more than 240,000 Americans have served as Peace Corps volunteers. It is widely seen as one of the most visible instruments of US soft power abroad.

Trump has taken steps to dismantle key pillars of America’s soft power, including the US Agency for International Development, the US Institute of Peace and government-funded broadcasters like Voice of America.

A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must return to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order that he not be sent there.

Reuters reports that the US government has acknowledged that the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whose lawyers say he was in the country legally, was made in error. But it says it had no legal authority to bring him back to the US.

US district judge Paula Xinis told a Justice Department lawyer:

This was an illegal act. Congress said you can’t do it, and you did it anyway.

Xinis has given the government three days to return Abrego Garcia to the US by 7 April.

The court heard that Abrego Garcia lived in the US legally and had a work permit. One of his lawyers, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told the judge there was no legal basis for the deportation.

They admit they had no legal authorization to remove him to El Salvador. The public interest lies in the government following the law.

Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the government, conceded that Abrego Garcia should not have been removed. “That is not in dispute,” Reuveni said.

On 15 March, Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration said it sent two flights to El Salvador that day carrying deportees processed under the rarely used wartime statute and a third flight carrying people deported under other rules.

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in a court filing said Abrego Garcia was wrongfully placed on the third flight despite an October 2019 judicial order granting him protection from deportation.

Lost in the weeds of Donald Trump’s trade war, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could visit the White House as early as next week, NBC News reports. He said on Friday:

We’ll speak about Israel, and we’ll speak about what’s going on. That’s another thing we’d like to get solved.

Trump’s comments come as Israel restarted its ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip, killing at least 25 people in airstrikes on the southern city of Khan Younis in what it claims is a renewed military campaign aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages.

Netanyahu on Wednesday said the army was “seizing territory” and “dividing up” Gaza, renewing fears of permanent displacement for the strip’s 2.3 million residents and inflaming worries that Israel intends to permanently take control of the territory.

More than 500 law firms signed onto an amicus brief on Friday in support of a challenge to Donald Trump’s efforts to target the legal profession.

“Although we do not take this step lightly, our abiding commitment to preserving the integrity of the American legal system leaves us no choice but to join together to oppose” Donald Trump’s 6 March executive order targeting Perkins Coie, the brief says. It was authored by Donald Verrilli, Jr., who served the solicitor general in Barack Obama’s administration.

“In recent weeks, the President has issued not one but five executive orders imposing punitive sanctions on leading law firms in undisguised retaliation for representations that the firm, or its former partners, have undertaken, and more may be in the offing.Those Orders pose a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself,” it says.

The brief amounts to the largest statement from the legal community so far in pushing back against Trump’s efforts to retaliate against lawyers. Some major firms, including Covington and Burling – the first firm Trump punished with an executive order – and Arnold & Porter – signed on to the brief.

But the brief was notable not just for how many firms signed, but who didn’t. Many of the nation’s most prominent and profitable law firms did not join.

Among the major firms missing were: Kirkland & Ellis, Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Several of those firms were reportedly hesitant to stick their neck out and sign without support from others, according to the New York Times.

So far, Trump has targeted five firms with executive orders – Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale. Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block have sued and successfully gotten preliminary rulings halting most of the orders. Covington and Burling has not taken legal action on its own.

Paul Weiss settled with the president and agreed to perform pro bono work and review its hiring practices in an agreement that has been widely criticized for only emboldening the president to go after other firms.

Several other firms, Skadden, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and Milbank LLP have all reached pre-emptive agreements with Trump to avoid orders.

Related: ‘They’re all bending’: Two more law firms reach deals with Trump to avoid executive orders

This is from Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade commissioner, saying he’s held “frank” talks with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and US trade representative Jamieson Greer during which he reaffirmed to them that “US tariffs are damaging, unjustified”.

“The [EU-US] trade relationship needs a fresh approach. The EU’s committed to meaningful negotiations but also prepared to defend our interests,” Šefčovič posted on X.

It echoes comments from the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who on Thursday described the tariffs as “a major blow to the world economy” spelling “dire” consequences for millions of people. She said the EU was prepared to respond, but urged Trump to “move from confrontation to negotiation”.

She said the EU was “preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail”.

Related: Macron suggests pause on US investment as EU leaders condemn Trump tariffs

Here’s Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform on the extension of the deadline for the sale of TikTok.

My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days. We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!). This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security! We do not want TikTok to “go dark.” We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Donald Trump extended the deadline for the sale of ByteDance’s US assets of TikTok by 75 days, saying “tremendous progress” had been made but more work was needed to secure approvals, Reuters reports.

“The deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed,” Trump said, explaining why he was extending the deadline he set in January that was supposed to expire Saturday. “We hope to continue working in good faith with China, who I understand is not very happy about our reciprocal tariffs.”

China now faces a 54% tariff on goods imported into the US. Trump has said he would be willing to reduce tariffs on China to get a deal done with ByteDance.

Trump has said his administration was in touch with four different groups about a prospective TikTok deal. He has not identified them. “We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark’,” he said.

The last time US tariffs were this high was after president Herbert Hoover signed into law the controversial Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill in 1930, which saw tariffs on many imported goods averaging nearly 40%.

Just as now, there was global indignation at what was seen as unreasonable protectionism by the US, with nations such as France threatening firm retaliation if it did not back down.

In a Manchester Guardian report below, former French prime minister Édouard Herriot was reported to have urged European governments to work together against the tariffs, claiming it was a “matter of life or death”. European economies at the time were decimated following the first world war.

As politicians sought to negotiate with the US, European businesses took a more direct course of action by boycotting US produce.

In the UK, department stores even placed placards in their windows advertising an ‘Empire loaf’, which was made with 85% Canadian flour.

The impact of Hoover’s tariffs were, as predicted by hundreds of economists, highly damaging to the US, with estimates of imported goods, many of which were needed by US industry and commerce, plummeting by nearly half.

Hoover’s protectionism might have appealed to staunch Republicans, but it ruined his standing among his party’s progressives.

Many Republicans who had campaigned for Hoover in the 1928 presidential election ended up endorsing Democrat Franklin D Roosevelt for president in the next election.

British prime minister Keir Starmer spoke to his Australian and Italian counterparts, Anthony Albanese and Giorgia Meloni, about how they should respond to Trump’s tariffs on Friday, saying they agreed an “all-out trade war would be extremely damaging”.

Reuters reports that in separate calls, Starmer said it had been “clear for a long time that like-minded countries must maintain strong relationships and dialogue to ensure our mutual security and maintain economic stability”, a spokesperson from his office said in a statement.

“They all agreed that an all-out trade war would be extremely damaging and is in nobody’s interests, while agreeing to keep in close contact in the coming days.”