Edit­ed By MICHAEL WAR­REN and CUR­TIS YEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sparked hys­te­ria in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets this spring by an­nounc­ing tar­iff rates on dozens of coun­tries be­fore un­veil­ing a 90-day ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­od.

That pe­ri­od was set to be­gin Wednes­day, but the pres­i­dent signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der Mon­day to de­lay the of­fi­cial tar­iff in­creas­es un­til Au­gust 1.

World mar­kets most­ly rose Tues­day, shrug­ging off U.S. tar­iff pres­sure. —(AP)

Trump says some coun­tries’ im­ports will be tar­iffed at 70%

By JOSHUA BOAK

Trump de­fend­ed his set­ting of tar­iff rates by send­ing let­ters to oth­er world lead­ers, say­ing that “some” coun­tries will be pay­ing rates of 60% and 70%.

Trump sent let­ters to the lead­ers of 14 coun­tries on Mon­day, many of the rates be­ing much low­er than what he float­ed was pos­si­ble at Tues­day’s cab­i­net meet­ing.

He de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to send let­ters as part of his 90-day ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­od draw­ing to a close be­cause he couldn’t con­duct talks with all of the coun­tries in the rest of the world.

“It’s a bet­ter way,” Trump said. “It’s a more pow­er­ful way. And we send you a let­ter. You read the let­ter. I think it was well craft­ed.”

Trump is meet­ing with his Cab­i­net

By DAR­LENE SU­PERVILLE

It will be the pres­i­dent’s first meet­ing with those run­ning the Cab­i­net de­part­ments and oth­er agen­cies since April 30.

Trump us­es these meet­ings to talk about his “wins” while Cab­i­net sec­re­taries use them to praise his lead­er­ship.

The April meet­ing — broad­cast live on tele­vi­sion — last­ed about two hours. A lot has hap­pened since then, in­clud­ing U.S. mil­i­tary airstrikes against Iran’s nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties and the en­act­ment of Trump’s tax and spend­ing cuts bill.

To­day’s meet­ing is sched­uled for 11 a.m. ET. It fol­lows Trump’s din­ner meet­ing Mon­day evening at the White House with Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu.

Mar­kets ap­pear to shrug off new tar­iff dead­lines for US trad­ing part­ners.

By TERE­SA CERO­JAN0, MATT OTT

Wall Street was mixed in qui­et trad­ing ear­ly Tues­day. Fu­tures for the S&P 500 added 0.1% be­fore the bell, while fu­tures for the Dow Jones In­dus­tri­al Av­er­age shed 0.1%. Nas­daq fu­tures rose 0.2%.

Mar­kets tum­bled Mon­day af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump set a 25% tax on goods im­port­ed from Japan and South Ko­rea and new tar­iff rates on a dozen oth­er na­tions sched­uled to go in­to ef­fect on Aug. 1.

The S&P slid 0.8% on Mon­day to its biggest one-day de­cline since June, but re­mains near record lev­els. The Dow and Nas­daq fared about the same, but the wild, tar­iff-in­duced swings of the spring seem to have tem­pered.

Japan’s prime min­is­ter vows to reach a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial deal with Trump

By MARI YA­M­AGUCHI

Shigeru Ishi­ba said Tues­day dur­ing a meet­ing of his en­tire Cab­i­net in Tokyo that Trump’s an­nounce­ment of 25% tar­iffs on all goods from Japan “is ex­treme­ly re­gret­table,” and ex­pressed his de­ter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­at­ing pa­tient­ly for a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial agree­ment while pro­tect­ing Japan’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

Ishi­ba not­ed that Trump’s lat­est tar­iff rate is low­er than what he had threat­ened ear­li­er, open­ing the way for more ne­go­ti­a­tions ahead of Trump’s lat­est dead­line of Aug. 1.

He in­struct­ed his min­is­ters to do their ut­most to seek a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial agree­ment while do­ing every­thing they can to mit­i­gate the im­pact on Japan­ese in­dus­tries and em­ploy­ment.