Donald Trump has pledged to impose tariffs on overseas agricultural goods within weeks, as the White House mulls whether to make good on a threat to hit Canada and Mexico with steep duties from Tuesday.
The US president claimed his administration would introduce tariffs on farm products from 2 April.
A string of such deadlines – including vows to hit Canada and Mexico with tariffs in January, and then February – have been delayed, however, as economists and business urge caution.
“To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social network, on Monday. “Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”
On Tuesday, Trump has said the US will impose a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on China, on top of the 10% tariff it imposed on China last month.
These duties “will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled”, he declared last week, until the fentanyl crisis “stops, or is seriously limited”.

@Sven, Atlanta Fed GDPNow provides a real-time estimate of the GDP. Normally, 2025/Q1 GDP would be released few weeks after the quarter-end, initial reading and then subsequent revisions - so, Spring/Summer.
But it's concerning that Atlanta Fed's and Piper Sandler estimates for 2025/Q1 GDP have changed to negative from positive - those are big swings for GDP.
But the discussion then will be is it just 1 negative quarter on technical tariff factors, or more serious - recession is defined as negative GDP for 2 successive quarters. That won't be known until Fall.
This is something to watch. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1E6eR

How I Trade for a Living, by Gary Smith, 1999

At dozens of National Weather Services offices across the country, staffing levels were low well before President Donald Trump took office. As the new administration announced mass terminations this week, current and former staffers said an exodus of new hires and veterans will hinder the agency’s ability to monitor and predict weather hazards.
The administration let go of meteorologists, hydrologists and technicians that help inform daily weather forecasts in places including Boston and Boise, Idaho. It fired scientists who build, improve and maintain weather models that form the backbone of weather forecasting around the globe. Staff at offices responsible for warning the public about tsunamis, tornadoes and hurricanes lost their jobs, as did an entire team dedicated to communicating NOAA’s work and science to the public.
Combined with Thursday’s firings the government climate and weather enterprise’s workforce contracted by more than 6 percent in two days. NOAA’s workforce is still large — starting this year at about 13,000 employees, including about 4,300 who work for the Weather Service — and a spokeswoman said Thursday the agency “remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public.”
About half of the Weather Service’s forecast offices were already understaffed, according to a congressional analysis released last year. When Trump took office and instituted a government-wide hiring freeze, it further strained staffs, forcing some to work double shifts to ensure all-day coverage, current and former Weather Service staff told The Washington Post.
Termination notices reviewed by The Post told NOAA and Weather Service staffers they were “not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs.” Louis Uccellini, who served as Weather Service director from 2013 to 2022 said that is far from the truth: “These are exactly the people we need,” he said.
Jobs were also eliminated at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center and Storm Prediction Center. The offices produce forecasts and analysis that inform work done by meteorologists in local forecast offices around the country — as well as private sector meteorologists and the media. The cuts also impacted NOAA’s tsunami warning centers in Alaska and Hawaii, according to a person familiar with those offices. Even before those layoffs, scientists at the centers logged overtime hours to ensure the public is apprised of tsunami threats, the person said.
Technicians who repair radar systems across the country lost their jobs, as did several from a team who handled larger repair projects at the Weather Service’s National Reconditioning Center in Missouri, said Jeran Krska, who was fired Thursday after leaving the private sector to join the center as director in September. “We’re falling even more into, we just can’t support the mission anymore,” Krska said. “Now they just terminated all the probationary people? We’re screwed.”
Krska’s office is responsible for major repairs to systems that gather weather observations to help issue forecasts. Budgets were already tight for many repair parts, and now repair technicians across the country are also among those fired, Krska said. “We were barely Band-Aided together as it was,” he said.
As much as 25 percent of the staff at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center was cut Thursday, Spinrad said — a blow to an office that faces a complex task of building, improving and maintaining the computer models that serve as a foundation for weather prediction.
The center handles more than 20 numerical weather prediction systems — programs that combine mathematical models of earth systems with observations of current conditions to produce weather predictions. Already, low staffing has affected the operations of at least one weather balloon station in Alaska that collects data on current conditions. Without information from sources like these, experts said the accuracy of models key to forecasts across the country and globe could be affected.
The modeling center is central to work championed by Neil Jacobs, Trump’s nominee to lead NOAA. The work is meant to improve U.S. weather models, generally outperformed by rival systems developed in Europe and the United Kingdom. The center is collaborating on efforts to build what is known as the Unified Forecast System, of which Jacobs serves as chief science adviser and that he has spearheaded as a means of improving forecasting accuracy.

@yogibb said,
Noted in Barron's - Economy:
Atlanta Fed GDPNow is projecting economic contraction for 2025/Q1 of -1.5% (real) vs +2.3% previously, while Piper Sandler switched to -2% from +2% previously.