By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. job market is slowing at a time when Americans are increasingly anxious about what President Donald Trump’s trade wars are going to do to the economy.

When the Labor Department releases employment numbers for March on Friday, they are expected to show that U.S. businesses, government agencies and nonprofits added 130,000 jobs last month, down from 151,000 in February, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. The unemployment rate is forecast to tick up to 4.2% in March from 4.1% in February.

Those would unspectacular but not terrible hiring numbers. But the fear is that things might get worse from here.

President Donald Trump’s trade wars – including the sweeping “Liberation Day’’ import taxes he announced Wednesday – threaten to drive up prices, disrupt commerce and invite retaliatory tariffs from America’s trading partners.

Another threat comes from the president’s promise to deport millions of immigrants who are working in the United States illegally. In the past several years, those workers have eased labor shortages and helped the economy keep growing. If they’re deported or frightened out of the job market, companies could have to cut back on what they do or increase wages and raise prices, potentially feeding inflation.

Likewise, purges of the federal workforce by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to threaten weigh the labor market and push up unemployment.

Still, the impact of Musk’s firings is only starting to show up.

“We do not expect DOGE-driven job cuts to be a sizable drag” in the overall March hiring numbers, Shruti Mishra, economist at Bank of America, wrote in a commentary. “The numbers are too small to move the needle on the broader labor market.’’

Mishra forecasts 185,000 new jobs last month, considerably higher than economists’ consensus, partly because she expects hiring at leisure and hospitality companies like hotels and restaurants to rebound after being pushed down by unusually cold weather in January and February.

The job market has cooled from the red-hot hiring days of 2021-2023. Employers added 151,000 jobs in February and 125,000 in January. Not bad but down from monthly averages of 168,000 last year, 216,000 in 2023, 380,000 in 2022 and a record 603,000 in 2021 as the economy surged back from COVID-19 lockdowns.

The economy has been remarkably durable in the face high interest rates.

In 2022 and 2023, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times to combat inflation. Economists expected the higher borrowing costs to tip the United States into recession. But they didn’t. Consumers kept spending, employers kept hiring and the economy kept growing.

Inflation came down – allowing the Fed to cut rates three times last year. But then progress against inflation stalled, forcing the Fed to put off more rate cuts this year.

Now there are increasing worries about the health of the economy. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey last month showed that two-thirds of American consumers expected unemployment to rise over the next year — the highest reading in 16 years.

“The U.S. economy is in good shape at the start of the second quarter, but the ongoing trade war has increased the risk of near-term recession dramatically,” Ershang Liang of PNC Economics wrote in a commentary Thursday.

Still, the slowdown, if one is coming, may not show up in Friday’s job numbers.

Thomas Simons, chief economist at Jefferies, says the March numbers may be inflated by seasonal adjustments and end up getting revised lower in coming months. “After we see more data, and eventually a number of revisions, this period of time in the labor market will probably look quite a bit worse than it does now,” he wrote in a commentary Thursday.

BANGKOK — Countries and industries were scrambling Friday to respond as President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs hikes upend global trade and world markets.

China responded to the 34% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China by announcing it will impose a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10.

Taiwan’s president promised to provide support to industries most vulnerable to the 32% tariffs Trump ordered in his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs announcement.

Shipping containers line the Ever Most cargo vessel docked at the Port of Oakland on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Vietnam said its deputy prime minister would visit the U.S. for talks on trade. Some, like the head of the EU’s European Commission, have vowed to fight back while promising to improve the rules book for free trade. Others said they were hoping to negotiate with the Trump administration for relief.

Fighting back

As with earlier countermoves to U.S. trade penalties, Beijing hit back with targeted action, as well as its universal 34% tariff on all products from the U.S.

The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it will impose more export controls on rare earths, which are materials used in high-tech products such as computer chips and electric vehicle batteries. Included in the list was samarium and its compounds, which are used in aerospace manufacturing and the defense sector. Another element called gadolinium is used in MRI scans.

China’s customs administration said it had suspended imports of chicken from two U.S. suppliers, Mountaire Farms of Delaware and Coastal Processing. It said Chinese customs had repeatedly detected furazolidone, a drug banned in China, in shipments from those companies.

Cargo containers line a shipping terminal at the Port of Oakland on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Additionally, the Chinese government said it has added 27 firms to lists of companies subject to trade sanctions or export controls.

For good measure, China also filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization, saying the U.S. tariffs were “a typical unilateral bullying practice that endangers the stability of the global economic and trade order.”

Seize the day

India was hit by a 26% tariff rate, lower than the 34% for Chinese exports and 46% for Vietnam. Its Commerce Ministry that it was “studying the opportunities that may arise due to this new development in U.S. trade policy.” It said talks were underway on a trade agreement, including “deepening supply chain integration.”

The U.S was New Delhi’s biggest trading partner in 2024 with two-way trade estimated at $129 billion, according to U.S. data. They have set an ambitious target of more than doubling their bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. Most pharmaceuticals and other medicines, important Indian exports to the U.S., are exempt from the reciprocal tariffs.

A hand-embroidery dress fabric made in India, costing a couple hundred dollars per yard, is sold at the Francia Textiles fabric store in the Fashion District in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

However, diamonds and other gems, another major export industry, are subject to the higher duties.

Business groups said they viewed the challenge as a chance to improve India’s competitiveness. “At a time when global trade dynamics are shifting rapidly, Indian exporters must be equipped with the right policies, strategies, and support to compete effectively,” S.C. Ralkan, head of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations, said in a statement.

We need to talk

Most U.S. trading partners have emphasized they hope negotiations can help resolve trade friction with Washington. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he was prepared to fly to Washington, in a last-ditch effort to forestall the 24% tariffs Trump ordered for exports from the biggest Asian U.S. ally.

Related Articles

David Brooks: Stagnation Day might be more like it

Republicans moving ahead with Trump’s ‘big’ bill of tax breaks and spending cuts amid tariff uproar

No more cheap skirts: Trump ends tax exemption for low-value Chinese imports

Trump says he supports proxy voting for new parents in Congress

Lawyers for a detained Tufts student from Turkey demand she be returned to Massachusetts

“The global trading system has serious deficiencies,” the president of the EU’s European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said Thursday while on a visit to Uzbekistan. But she chided Trump, saying that “reaching for tariffs as your first and last tool will not fix it. This is why from the onset we have always been ready to negotiate with the United States.”

In Italy, Premier Giorgia Meloni told state TV she believes the 20% U.S. tariffs on exports from Europe were wrong, but “it is not the catastrophe that some are making it out to be.’’ Her government planned to meet next week with representatives of affected sectors to formulate plans. “We need to open an honest discussion on the matter with the Americans, with the goal, at least from my point of view, of removing tariffs, not multiplying them,’’ Meloni said.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Pham Thu Hang, said Hanoi would keep talking with the U.S. to “find practical solutions” as 46% U.S. tariffs threatened to decimate exports of footwear, electronics, textiles and seafood.

“If enforced, would negatively impact bilateral economic and trade relations as well as the interests of businesses and people in both countries,” Hang said in comments cited by state-run media, which reported that the deputy prime ninister and former finance minister Ho Duc Phoc was scheduled to visit the U.S. for trade talks next week.

A helping hand

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said he will offer the “greatest support” to industries most impacted by the new tariffs. Taiwan’s trade surplus with the U.S. is relatively high partly because the island is a major source of computer chips and other advanced technology. Lai said in a statement on his Facebook page that “We feel that this is unreasonable and are also worried about the subsequent impact these measures may have on the global economy.”

Lai said he instructed Premier Cho Jung-tai to work closely with industries that are impacted and to communicate with the public about their plans to stabilize the economy.

Japan’s leader Ishiba and other governments also said they were preparing countermeasures to help industries cope.

Likewise, von der Leyen said the EU was consulting with steel and auto makers, pharmaceutical companies and other industries about how to give them more “breathing space.”

Looking elsewhere

Trump’s decision to sharply raise tariffs on countries spanning the globe is “self-defeating,” Wang Huiyao, president of the Chinese think tank Center for China and Globalization, said in an interview.

The latest tariffs impose heavy burdens on some countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

A La Segunda Chilean newspaper leads with an image of President Donald Trump and a story about his imposed “reciprocal” tariffs, clipped to a kiosk in Santiago, Chile, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

It’s a trade war with the world, Wang said, while China’s strategy is to trade more with Southeast Asia and Latin America, with Europe, the Middle East and other developing nations.

“The likely outcome is that China will become the largest trading nation and its economy will be trading more with other nations and the U.S. may … become more isolated,” Wang said.

Europe will work to build more bridges and as a regional economic bloc of 450 million people, larger than the United States, it also has its own huge market, said von der Leyen, the EC president.

The EU is its own “safe harbor in tumultuous times,” she said.

AP journalists from around the world contributed.

BEIJING (AP) — China announced Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10, part of a flurry of retaliatory measures following U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” slate of double-digit tariffs.

The new tariff matches the rate of the U.S. “reciprocal” tariff of 34% on Chinese exports Trump ordered this week.

The Commerce Ministry in Beijing also said in a notice that it will impose more export controls on rare earths, which are materials used in high-tech products such as computer chips and electric vehicle batteries.

Included in the list of minerals subject to controls was samarium and its compounds, which are used in aerospace manufacturing and the defense sector. Another element called gadolinium is used in MRI scans.

China’s customs administration said it had suspended imports of chicken from two U.S. suppliers, Mountaire Farms of Delaware and Coastal Processing. It said Chinese customs had repeatedly detected furazolidone, a drug banned in China, in shipments from those companies.

Additionally, the Chinese government said it has added 27 firms to lists of companies subject to trade sanctions or export controls.

Among them, 16 are subject to a ban on the export of “dual-use” goods. High Point Aerotechnologies, a defense tech company, and Universal Logistics Holding, a publicly traded transportation and logistics company, were among those listed.

Beijing also announced it filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over the tariffs issue.

“The United States’ imposition of so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ seriously violates WTO rules, seriously damages the legitimate rights and interests of WTO members, and seriously undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system and international economic and trade order,” the Commerce Ministry said.

“It is a typical unilateral bullying practice that endangers the stability of the global economic and trade order. China firmly opposes this,” it said.

In February, China announced a 15% tariff on imports of coal and liquefied natural gas products from the U.S. It separately added a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars.

The latest tariffs apply to all products made in the U.S., according to a statement from the Ministry of Finance’s State Council Tariff Commission.

I’ll let others describe the economic carnage President Donald Trump’s tariffs have already begun to wreak. I want to describe the damage they will do to the American psyche and the American soul.

Trump is building walls. His trade policies obstruct not only the flow of goods but also the flow of ideas, contacts, technology and friendships as well. His immigration policies do the same. He assaults the institutions and communities most involved in international exchange: scientific researchers, universities, the diplomatic corps, foreign aid agencies and international alliances like NATO.

The essence of the Trump agenda might be: We don’t like those damn foreigners.

The problem is that great nations throughout the history of Western civilization have been crossroads nations. They have been places where people from all over met, exchanged ideas and came up with new ones together. In his book “Cities in Civilization,” Peter Hall looked at the most innovative places down through the centuries: Athens in the fifth century B.C., Florence in the 15th century, Vienna from the late 18th century to the eve of World War I, New York from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, the Bay Area later on.

They were all meeting spots for people from different nations. Hall writes, “People meet, people talk, people listen to each other’s music and each other’s words, dance each other’s dances, take in each other’s thoughts. And so, by accidents of geography, sparks may be struck and something new come out of the encounter.” This, he continues, happens in junction points, places that encourage global interaction. Such places have common characteristics: They are unstuffy, un-classbound, nonhierarchical, informal.

Economic innovation explodes, he writes, “in places with a rich network of import channels, which in turn provide channels for new ideas.”

This used to be America. A crossroads nation, we attracted highly driven immigrants who wanted to be where the action was. We championed free trade. British colonialism and American internationalism made English the closest thing we have to a global language.

This used to be our future. In a 2009 essay for Foreign Affairs called “America’s Edge,” Anne-Marie Slaughter argued that power in the 21st century would accrue to nations that put themselves in the center of networks, and that America was well suited to play that role. We have a diverse populace with global connections, alliances across two great oceans, the greatest universities with large foreign student bodies.

All that is being damaged. But that’s not even my main concern. My main concern is over the spirit and values of the country. People’s psychologies are formed by the conditions that surround them. The conditions that Trump is creating are based on and nurture a security mindset: they’re threatening us; it’s a zero-sum, dog-eat-dog world; we need to protect, protect, protect. We need to build walls.

Once again, the problem is that if you look at the cultures of societies at their peak, that is pretty much the opposite of the mentality you find. In, “Civilisation,” his own survey of the high points of Western history, art critic Kenneth Clark concluded that great periods are built on great confidence — a nation’s confidence in its laws and its capacities. That shared culture of confidence naturally infused people with social courage, a venturing spirit.

Think, for example, of the kind of people who drive innovation and dynamism. What are they like?

They put themselves in unfamiliar situations.

They are enthusiastic about novelty. Journalist Adam Hochschild once wrote: “When I’m in a country radically different from my own, I notice much more. It is as if I’ve taken a mind-altering drug that allows me to see things I would normally miss. I feel much more alive.”

They have diversive curiosity.

Their interests and enthusiasms span many spheres. Nobel laureates are at least 22 times more likely than the average scientists to have a side hobby as a magician, actor, dancer or some other type of performer.

They have social range, a wide variety of friends.

In the decades before he published “On the Origin of Species,” Charles Darwin exchanged regular letters with at least 231 scientists in 13 different fields, as varied as economics and biology.

They are able to combine disparate worldviews.

Creativity often happens when somebody combines two galaxies of ideas. Pablo Picasso combined Western portraiture with African masks. Johannes Gutenberg combined woodblock engraving, coin-making and the wine press to create his printing press.

They are driven toward continual growth.

They seek to expand their interests and attachments, to engage in continual self-improvement. You can spot such people because they have gone through different chapters. Always learning, they have shifted their interests and worldviews over the years, torn down one way of making meaning and built up something new. Ralph Waldo Emerson was onto something when he wrote, “Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.”

There’s a name for the values and posture I’m describing here: cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan has roots in one town and one nation but treasures and learns from many other national streams. In a phrase I’ve used before, her life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base.

Sometimes it seems like the 21st century has witnessed one attack after another upon cosmopolitanism — from 9/11 onward. Leader after leader appeals to fear of impurity and threat. This mean world vibe not only reduces contact between peoples, but it squelches the venturesomeness that has been America’s best defining trait. Trump called Wednesday Liberation Day, but Stagnation Day might be more like it.

If America is still America, these tariffs will represent the turning point of the Trump presidency. People will be outraged by the useless economic pain they are causing; and, more subtly, revolted by the cowardly values they represent.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.

Related Articles

Suzanne Nossel: Remember when it was the right that got outraged over ‘banned words’?

Thomas Friedman: I just saw the future. It was not in America

David M. Drucker: Congress began ceding power to presidents long before Trump

Barbara McQuade: Nationwide injunctions are a problem. Ending them isn’t the answer

Thomas Friedman: What I heard this past week in China about our shared future