Trump’s tariffs could push America — and the world — into recession

The saying goes that when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold — pithy shorthand to describe how changes in the world’s biggest economy ripple out to impact everyone else.

The saying goes that when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold — pithy shorthand to describe how changes in the world’s biggest economy ripple out to impact everyone else. But that adage doesn’t go nearly far enough to convey the enormity of the likely fallout from US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a colossal set of new tariffs on America’s trading partners. “The US isn’t sneezing, the US is hacking off one of its limbs,” Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, told CNN. At the start of the year, the American economy was “in a very good place,” he noted. Now, “if these tariffs continue as they are, (it will) probably tip into recession.” And that, he said, will likely have a knock-on negative impact on economies around the world. On Wednesday, Trump announced a 10% baseline tariff on all goods imports into the United States and even higher tariffs on products from about 60 economies. The harder-hit trading partners include China and the European Union, which face new duties of 34% and 20% respectively. But America is harming itself as much as, if not more than, other economies with its latest tariffs, analysts say.