Resistance is futile, make a deal: Trump’s tariff message to the world

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Leaders from Canada, Europe and China are threatening stiff countermeasures against the U.S. in response to President Trump’s surprisingly steep tariffs on nearly all imports.

The administration’s response is, don’t even think about it. Trump is trying to short-circuit the trade war’s cycle of retaliation by threatening massive new tariffs on any country that responds, and by dangling the prospect of a better deal for those who hold their fire and negotiate. The highest tariffs—the so-called reciprocal duties for many countries with goods-trade imbalances with the U.

S.—don’t go into effect until Wednesday, giving world leaders time to plead their cases with a president who considers himself a master dealmaker. “One of the messages that I’d like to get out tonight is everybody sit back, take a deep breath, don’t immediately retaliate, let’s see where this goes," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN soon after Trump’s tariff announcement Wednesday. “Because if you retaliate, that’s how we get escalation." So far, much of the world is holding out hope for a deal.

Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, which has a free-trade agreement with the U.S. but now faces 10% tariffs, said his government wouldn’t join a “race to the bottom" by retaliating. Japan, which will be subject to 24% tariffs, didn’t immediately announce plans to retaliate.

India, facing a 26% tariff, according to Trump’s executive order, indicated it had no plans to retaliate. Even the two countries that have retaliated—China, which faces tariffs of up to 70% now, and Canada, which went from a no-tariff free-trade agreement to 25% tariffs on many exports—have held back their most potent weapons. For Canada,