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Stock markets stumbled on Monday as Donald Trump pushed ahead with fresh tariffs on the US’s trading partners despite a supreme court strike-down and growing opposition from domestic voters.
Uncertainty over the status of global trade deals spooked investors, trigging a drop in US shares prices including on the Dow Jones industrial average, which tumbled 1.4% in morning trading. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 also fell 0.9% and 1.1%, after losses for European stock markets.
Shareholders were struggling to discern the next steps in Trump’s global trade war, after the US supreme court ruled on Friday that the president overstepped his legal authority by using emergency measures to impose tariffs on countries across the world last year.
However, Trump went on to announce over the weekend that he would push ahead and impose temporary tariffs on US imports from all countries: first declaring a 10% rate, before increasing that figure to 15%, under a never-before-used section of the Trade Act of 1974.
Trump used his Truth Social platform on Monday to warn he could end up imposing tariffs in a “much more powerful and obnoxious way”, before threatening world leaders over their plans to reassess trade deals in light of the court ruling. “Any Country that wants to ‘play games’ with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have ‘Ripped Off’ the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to. BUYER BEWARE!!!” Trump said.
That warning comes despite signs of growing domestic opposition to the US president’s trade war.
A YouGov poll, conducted hours after the supreme court decision was released on Friday, showed most Americans – about 60% – backed the supreme court’s decision to strike down Trump’s sweeping tariffs regime.
Support for the supreme court’s ruling crossed political lines, gaining approval from 88% of Democrats, 63% of independents, and a large minority of Republicans at 30%.
It comes amid price pressures, with most Americans saying Trump’s tariffs have resulted in them having to pay more for goods and services. Republicans were four times more likely to say Trump’s tariffs have increased prices than to say that they had slashed costs for consumers, YouGov surveys showed.
Frustration was already brewing before judges deemed the tariffs illegal on Friday, with a Fox News poll showing 63% of registered voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of tariffs, while only 37% approved. That polling is likely to raise concerns among Republicans as they head into midterm elections in November.
