Trump says court halt of tariffs would cause 'Great Depression'
"It would be 1929 all over again, a GREAT DEPRESSION!" he said.
Trump's hyperbolic statements come as a US appeals court weighs the legality of his broad use of emergency powers to enact sweeping tariffs on trading partners.
A lower court ruled against Trump in May, but the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit put the ruling on hold as it considers the case.
Trump on Friday touted billions of dollars in tariff revenue "pouring" into the Treasury -- paid by US importers -- and recent stock market records, as proof his levies had created "the largest amount of money, wealth creation and influence the U.S.A. has ever seen."
Many economists meanwhile worry the tariffs are stoking inflation and see trade policy uncertainty as slowing investment.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has announced a slew of new tariffs, seeking to force a reordering of global trade that he has long claimed is biased against the United States.
In addition to sweeping tariffs invoked under declarations of economic emergencies, he has also instituted sectoral tariffs of between 25 percent and 50 percent on steel and other items.
Those levies have generally followed government investigations and are not at issue in the pending litigation.
At a July 31 hearing, members of the appeals court appeared skeptical of the Trump administration's arguments that it had broad discretion to declare national economic emergencies and invoke tariffs as a remedy.
To invoke his so-called "reciprocal" tariffs on many US trade partners, Trump declared a national emergency over "large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits."
Opponents to the White House policy have argued that such a reason does not qualify under the law Trump has cited for the tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
They also argue that levying blanket tariffs on imports requires the consent of Congress under the US Constitution.
The case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court, where conservatives enjoy a 6-3 majority, though analysts say the outcome is uncertain.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
LeMonde
2 hours ago
- LeMonde
Leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shake hands and sign deal at White House peace summit
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands Friday, August 8, at a White House peace summit before signing an agreement aimed at ending decades of conflict. President Donald Trump was in the middle as Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan flanked him on either side. As the two extended their arms in front of Trump to shake hands, the US leader reached up and clasped his hands around theirs. The two countries in the South Caucasus signed agreements with each other and the US that will reopen key transportation routes while allowing the US to seize on Russia's declining influence in the region. The deal includes an agreement that will create a major transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the White House said. Trump said at the White House on Friday that naming the route after him was "a great honor for me" but "I didn't ask for this." A senior administration official, on a call before the event with reporters, said it was the Armenians who suggested the name. Both leaders said the breakthrough was made possible by Trump and his team. "We are laying a foundation to write a better story than the one we had in the past," Pashinyan said, calling the agreement a "significant milestone." "President Trump in six months did a miracle," Aliyev added. '35 years they fought' Trump remarked on how long the conflict went on between the two countries. "35 years they fought, and now they're friends and they're going to be friends a long time," he said. That route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) patch of Armenian territory. The demand from Azerbaijan had held up peace talks in the past. For Azerbaijan, a major producer of oil and gas, the route also provides a more direct link to Turkey and onward to Europe. Trump indicated he'd like to visit the route, saying, "We're going to have to get over there." Asked how he feels about lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump said "very confident." Friday's signing adds to the handful of peace and economic agreements brokered this year by the US. The peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda helped end the decadeslong conflict in eastern Congo , and the US mediated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, while Trump intervened in clashes between Cambodia and Thailand by threatening to withhold trade agreements with both countries if their fighting continued. Yet peace deals in Gaza and Ukraine have been elusive. Trump has made no secret of his wish to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping ease long-running conflicts across the globe. Aliyev and Pashinyan on Friday joined a growing list of foreign leaders and other officials who have said the US leader should receive the award.
Euronews
5 hours ago
- Euronews
Azerbaijan and Armenia sign peace agreement after decades of conflict
Leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev signed a peace agreement on Friday in the presence of US President Donald Trump in Washington, after almost four decades of a bloody Karabakh conflict. 'We are today establishing peace in the South Caucasus,' Azerbaijan's President Aliyev said. "Today we writing a great new history." Armenian Premier Pashinyan added this agreement represented "opening a chapter of peace". "(We're) laying foundations to a better story that the one we had in the past," he added. "The countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan are committing to ending all fighting forever," Trump said at a joint press conference with the two leaders. "They suffered greatly for so many years, many tried to find resolution, the European Union, the Russians, never happened," he added. "But with this accord we finally succeeded making peace." In September 2023, Azerbaijan reclaimed full control of the Karabakh region after a lightning military campaign, and over the past year, Baku and Yerevan have been making progress in normalising their relations. Although the Friday's signing ceremony included not only Pashinyan and Aliyev, but also Trump, the former adversaries managed to mend fences only when there was no third party involved any more, including Washington and Moscow. But unlike Russia, the US will benefit from the peace agreement. 'Trump route' in South Caucasus Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to create a major transit corridor that will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. It will connect mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan region, which borders Baku's ally Turkey via Armenian territory. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the new transit corridor will 'allow unimpeded connectivity between the two countries while respecting Armenia's sovereignty and territorial integrity and its people.' Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan are separated by a 32-kilometre patch of Armenia's territory. For Baku, the corridor offers a direct land connection to Nakhchivan, strengthens ties with Turkey and consolidates post-war gains through infrastructure diplomacy. It also strengthens Azerbaijan's position as a crucial transport and logistics hub on a global scale. Initially, Azerbaijan did not want to have any third party involved and preferred to have it under Baku's control, without the US, Europe or Russia's involvement. For Yerevan the transport route provides an opportunity to further integrate into wider trade networks, diversify its battered economy and attract foreign investment. Geopolitically, it would also help Armenia normalise relations with its neighbours. Yerevan was concerned it could threaten Armenian sovereignty and wanted it to remain under Armenian control. The new Trump route will be operated according to Armenian law, and the US will sublease the land to a consortium for infrastructure and management, the officials said. Trump previewed much of Friday's plan in a social media post Thursday evening, saying the two leaders would sign economic agreements with the US that would 'fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus region.' 'Many leaders have tried to end the war, with no success, until now, thanks to Trump,' the US president said on his Truth Social site. Former allies Signing the peace agreement in Washington alongside the US president sends a strong signal to Moscow regarding the two countries' commitment to finding a solution among themselves, but also redirects their foreign policy focus to the West. Moscow has been trying to repair the cooperation with both Baku and Yerevan, offering "mediation" and launching disinformation campaigns against Yerevan. In recent days, Russia-state-controlled media have issued massive criticism and numerous attacks on Nikol Pashinyan, accusing him of 'trading' Armenian sovereignty for personal financial gains and even calling him a 'puppet'. Earlier Moscow had also launched disinformation campaigns against Yerevan with false allegations of 'a bio weapons facility in Armenia orchestrated by the Americans'. Moscow had repeatedly made similar claims about US bio-weapons facilities in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. Russia has also made similar false claims about Georgia in the past. Russia's attempts to repair its ties with Baku were entirely destroyed when an Azerbaijani airliner crashed in Kazakhstan in December, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. As exclusively reported by Euronews, investigations into the incident revealed that the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was shot at by Russian air defence over Russia's Grozny and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare. Azerbaijani President Aliyev recently announced that his country is preparing to file lawsuits in international courts against Russia regarding the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash. Referring to the investigation into the Malaysian airline Boeing case, shot down by Russian militants over the Russia-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine, Aliyev said Baku is ready to wait as long as it takes. 'We are ready to wait 10 years, but justice must win. And unfortunately, the situation, which is currently in limbo, does not contribute to the development of bilateral relations between Russia and Azerbaijan," he explained. Last month, Azerbaijan and Russia engaged in another rare escalation. Baku detained the executive director and editor-in-chief of Russia's state-run news agency Sputnik following Moscow's raids of the Azeri community in Yekaterinburg. Two people died during the raid by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), and 50 more were detained.
France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
Swiss gold refining sector stung by US tariffs
The price of gold on the US futures market hit a record high Friday after US customs authorities clarified that gold bars weighing either one kilogram or 100 ounces (2.8 kilograms) should be classified as subject to so-called reciprocal tariffs. The July 31 letter was first reported late Thursday by the Financial Times. But a White House official told AFP that President Donald Trump's administration plans to "issue an executive order in the near future clarifying misinformation about the tariffing of gold bars and other specialty products". It was not immediately clear if this meant the products would therefore be exempt from Trump's "reciprocal" levies, imposed to address what Washington deems as unfair trade deficits. One-kilo gold bars are the most traded type of bullion on Comex -- the world's biggest futures market -- and Switzerland is a major supplier of the bars on the physical market. Expectations had been widespread that gold bars would be classified under a different customs code that excludes them from Trump's countrywide tariffs. Higher "reciprocal" rates took effect Thursday on dozens of economies. Swiss officials travelled to Washington this week to seek a deal similar to the European Union, whose products now face a 15-percent rate. But they came back empty handed. The customs update increased pressure on the Swiss government as gold trading weighs heavily on its trade balance. John Plassard, head of investment strategy at Cite Gestion, expects some of the gold refining business would likely flow to other industry centres such as Antwerp. Gold bars produced in the Belgian city Antwerp face a 15-percent US tariff applied to EU goods. Refining powerhouse Switzerland is home to four of the world's largest gold refineries, the largest being Valcambi in Balerna, in the Italian-speaking part of the country. They import unrefined gold coming from mines, recycled jewellery or lower-purity bars to be recast into high-quality bars, making Switzerland a hub for the global gold trade. These bars are then reintroduced to the market for jewellery, watchmaking, industry and tech products, as well as the banking sector and for use as central bank reserves. Over a third of global refining According to a Swiss Federal Customs Administration report, the country imported 2,372 tonnes of gold in 2023 and re-exported 1,564 tonnes. The value of these exports approached 88 billion Swiss francs ($109 billion at current rates), with the main buyers being China at 25.1 billion francs and India at 13.1 billion francs. Including other precious metals like silver and palladium, the sector accounts for 1,500 direct jobs in the country and 1,000 indirect jobs, according to the Swiss association of manufacturers and traders of precious metals. In 2023, Switzerland accounted for 34 percent of the total refined gold worldwide, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). Export surge to the US Swiss gold exports to the United States soared to 11 billion Swiss francs last year, nearly doubling from 6.1 billion in 2023. They then skyrocketed in the first half of 2025, reaching 39.2 billion francs, compared to nearly 1.7 billion in the first half of 2024, according to data Swiss customs provided to AFP. Nearly all of the gold -- 37.6 billion francs' worth -- was exported in the first quarter of 2025. Shipments then plummeted sharply to roughly 1.6 billion francs in the second quarter. Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter on Thursday strongly disagreed with how Trump assessed the US trade deficit with Switzerland, and thus the high tariff imposed. She said the rise in gold exports in 2024 had led to the increase in the deficit. Swiss newspaper Le Temps noted Tuesday that to calculate customs duties on Switzerland "the White House seems to have relied exclusively on 2024 data," which was "an atypical year". Swiss gold exports to the United States skyrocketed in November, when Trump won the presidential election, triggering a surge in "safe haven" investments such as gold, it said.
