US President Donald Trump holds a chart titled 'Reciprocal Tariffs' during an event at the White House in Washington, DC, on 2 April 2025. Photo: AFP / Brendan Smialowski
Trump's tariffs have caused chaos across global markets, and when the US opened to major losses this week, the internet dubbed it 'Orange Monday'. Beyond the memes, here's a timeline of the last week of mayhem.
This story is so fast-moving that even in the minutes after this podcast went to air, there was a major shift - Trump paused reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, and further raised China's tariff rate.
It's the third time this century that global markets have plummeted to terrifying lows.
The first was the global financial crisis, the pandemic caused the second, but this meltdown has been triggered by one person, says Rebecca Howard, news editor for BusinessDesk.
And how it all ends is "the trillion dollar question".
Today The Detail looks back on the last seven days of turmoil since the US president's 'Liberation Day' wiped trillions of dollars from sharemarkets and led to huge drops in currency values and interest rates over fears of a trade war plunging the world into a recession.
In the words of Kiwibank's economists, "the world as we know it is changing with a hundred years of reducing tariffs, and globalisation now reversing."
They are among the experts the world over scrambling to unpack the so-called 'market armageddon' caused by the worse-than-expected taxes to be imposed on foreign goods imported into the US.
High tariffs are nothing new in the US. Between 1789 and 1913 they were worth up to 90 percent of US federal income. Howard explains that the US Administration's justification this time for breaking the world order on rules-based trading is three-pronged.
"Their first goal is for access to markets. They feel that they've been abused. Trump was talking about raping and pillaging.
"This is a very blunt instrument to force all these countries that are trying to negotiate with Trump to give the United States better access into their markets."
Howard points out that tariffs will raise huge amounts of revenue that could serve to pay down debt or pay for the promised tax cuts.
"The third thing they're looking to do is to bring back manufacturing to the United States so that they can improve the economy and create jobs, but the commentary I've seen around that is that manufacturing no long creates a huge number of jobs because it is highly automated and robotic."
Ironically, she says that all the robotic machinery for the new factories will have to be imported from China.
The world knew the tariff announcement was coming, but the scale was shocking, she says. Tariffs range from as low as 10 percent for New Zealand and other countries to more damaging hikes of nearly 50 percent for Asian countries to Trump's vow to hit China with 125 percent.
Just as the markets were showing signs of recovery earlier this week, that threat sent them deep into the red again, says Howard.
She'll be watching to see how large importers of Chinese goods such as Walmart manage tariffs.
"They get around 60 percent of their products from China so does that mean they will be paying double what they were paying a week ago?"
Howard says people are poised to take advantage of the market rout, with fund managers looking for bargains. But even with the share prices so low there is still a risk.
"It's like a falling knife. When do you jump back in."
Howard says the impact on Americans will also be closely watched.
"Obviously their endgame here isn't to make their economy worse, it's to make it better and yet the commentary is all around how this is going to create higher unemployment, this is going to create higher inflation, this is going to mean that interest rates need to go higher, and stay higher for longer.
"The other scenario is where they go into recession and interest rates need to be cut.
"Even people like the chair of the Federal Reserve was saying the tariffs were significantly larger than he expected."
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