Un­de­terred by a stock mar­ket col­lapse that has con­tin­ued for days, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened ad­di­tion­al tar­iffs on Chi­na on Mon­day, rais­ing fresh con­cerns that his dri­ve to re­bal­ance the glob­al econ­o­my could in­ten­si­fy a fi­nan­cial­ly de­struc­tive trade war.

Trump’s threat, which he de­liv­ered on so­cial me­dia, came af­ter Chi­na said it would re­tal­i­ate against U.S. tar­iffs he an­nounced last week.

“If Chi­na does not with­draw its 34% in­crease above their al­ready long term trad­ing abus­es by to­mor­row, April 8th, 2025, the Unit­ed States will im­pose AD­DI­TION­AL Tar­iffs on Chi­na of 50%, ef­fec­tive April 9th,” he wrote on Truth So­cial. “Ad­di­tion­al­ly, all talks with Chi­na con­cern­ing their re­quest­ed meet­ings with us will be ter­mi­nat­ed!”

If Trump im­ple­ments his plans, U.S. tar­iffs on im­ports from Chi­na would reach a com­bined 104%. The new tax­es would be on top of the 20% tar­iffs an­nounced as pun­ish­ment for fen­tanyl traf­fick­ing and his sep­a­rate 34% tar­iffs an­nounced last week. Not on­ly could that in­crease prices for Amer­i­can con­sumers, it could give Chi­na an in­cen­tive to flood oth­er coun­tries with cheap­er goods and seek deep­er part­ner­ships with oth­er trad­ing part­ners.

Trump faces mount­ing pres­sure in the fi­nan­cial mar­kets and from busi­ness lead­ers to back­track on his tar­iff am­bi­tions, yet he has shown no signs of re­vers­ing course or find­ing a mes­sage to calm pan­icked mar­kets. The White House said Mon­day that Trump would ve­to a Sen­ate bill that would man­date con­gres­sion­al ap­proval for new tar­iffs, a bet that the crit­i­cal mass of Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers will loy­al­ly back his tax­es on im­ports de­spite the eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal chaos be­ing cre­at­ed.

As of mid­day on Mon­day, the Dow Jones In­dus­tri­al Av­er­age had fall­en 750 points, or 2%. The S&P 500 had slumped 1.5%, and the Nas­daq com­pos­ite was off 1.2%. The drop in the mar­kets briefly re­versed in the morn­ing af­ter a false re­port that Trump was con­sid­er­ing a pause in his tar­iff plans. The fran­tic trad­ing, which sent stocks spik­ing be­fore plum­met­ing again, showed how in­vestors are op­er­at­ing on a hair trig­ger and are ea­ger for any sign of en­cour­ag­ing news.

The White House ac­count said it was “fake news” that Trump was con­sid­er­ing a pause. The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent has re­mained de­fi­ant de­spite fears that he could be push­ing the U.S. to­ward a re­ces­sion, in­sist­ing that his tar­iffs are nec­es­sary for re­build­ing do­mes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­set­ting trade re­la­tion­ships with oth­er coun­tries.

“Be Strong, Coura­geous, and Pa­tient, and GREAT­NESS will be the re­sult!” he wrote on Truth So­cial.

He ac­cused oth­er coun­tries of “tak­ing ad­van­tage of the Good OL’ USA” said “our past ‘lead­ers’ are to blame for al­low­ing this.” Trump al­so called on the Fed­er­al Re­serve to low­er in­ter­est rates. On Fri­day, Fed­er­al Re­serve Chair Jerome Pow­ell warned that the tar­iffs could in­crease in­fla­tion, and he said “there’s a lot of wait­ing and see­ing go­ing on, in­clud­ing by us,” be­fore any de­ci­sions would be made.

In­vestors ex­pect the U.S. cen­tral bank to cut its bench­mark in­ter­est rates at least four times by the end of this year, ac­cord­ing to CME Group’s Fed­Watch, a sign that con­cerns about in­fla­tion will be eclipsed by fears of lay­offs and a shrink­ing econ­o­my.

Trump spent the week­end in Flori­da, ar­riv­ing on Thurs­day night to at­tend a Sau­di-fund­ed tour­na­ment at his Mi­a­mi golf course. He stayed at Mar-a-La­go, his pri­vate club in Palm Beach, and golfed at two of his prop­er­ties near­by.

On Sun­day, he post­ed a video of him­self hit­ting a dri­ve, and he told re­porters aboard Air Force One that evening that he won a club cham­pi­onship.

“It’s good to win,” Trump said. “You heard I won, right?”

He al­so said that he wouldn’t back down from his tar­iffs de­spite the tur­moil in the glob­al mar­kets.

“Some­times you have to take med­i­cine to fix some­thing,” Trump said.

Gold­man Sachs is­sued a new fore­cast say­ing a re­ces­sion has be­come more like­ly even if Trump back­tracks from his tar­iffs. The fi­nan­cial firm said eco­nom­ic growth would slow dra­mat­i­cal­ly “fol­low­ing a sharp tight­en­ing in fi­nan­cial con­di­tions, for­eign con­sumer boy­cotts, and a con­tin­ued spike in pol­i­cy un­cer­tain­ty that is like­ly to de­press cap­i­tal spend­ing by more than we had pre­vi­ous­ly as­sumed.”

Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen said the Eu­ro­pean Union would fo­cus on trade with oth­er coun­tries be­sides the Unit­ed States, say­ing there are “vast op­por­tu­ni­ties” else­where.

Trump said he spoke with Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Shigeru Ishi­ba to start trade ne­go­ti­a­tions. He com­plained on Truth So­cial “they have treat­ed the U.S. very poor­ly on Trade” and “they don’t take our cars, but we take MIL­LIONS of theirs.”

Ishi­ba said he told Trump that he’s “strong­ly con­cerned” that tar­iffs would dis­cour­age in­vest­ment from Japan, which has been the world’s biggest in­vestor in the U.S. in the past five years. He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a “na­tion­al cri­sis” and said that his gov­ern­ment would ne­go­ti­ate with Wash­ing­ton to urge Trump to re­con­sid­er the tar­iffs.

White House trade ad­vis­er Pe­ter Navar­ro sug­gest­ed coun­tries would need to do much more than sim­ply low­er their own tar­iff rates to reach deals, say­ing they would have to make struc­tur­al changes to their tax and reg­u­la­to­ry codes.

“Let’s take Viet­nam,” he said on CN­BC. “When they come to us and say, ‘We’ll go to ze­ro tar­iffs,’ that means noth­ing to us be­cause it’s the non-tar­iff cheat­ing that mat­ters.”

On Mon­day, Trump wel­comed the Los An­ge­les Dodgers to the White House to cel­e­brate their World Se­ries vic­to­ry. He’s al­so meet­ing with Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, but the White House said their planned joint press con­fer­ence has been can­celed.

Trump has strived for a unit­ed front af­ter the chaot­ic in­fight­ing of his first term. How­ev­er, the eco­nom­ic tur­bu­lence has ex­posed some frac­tures with­in his dis­parate coali­tion of sup­port­ers.

Bill Ack­man, a hedge fund man­ag­er, lashed out at Com­merce Sec­re­tary Howard Lut­nick on Sun­day as “in­dif­fer­ent to the stock mar­ket and the econ­o­my crash­ing.” He said Can­tor Fitzger­ald, the fi­nan­cial firm led by Lut­nick be­fore he joined the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, stood to prof­it be­cause of bond in­vest­ments.

On Mon­day, Ack­man apol­o­gized for his crit­i­cism but re­it­er­at­ed his con­cerns about Trump’s tar­iffs.

“I am just frus­trat­ed watch­ing what I be­lieve to be a ma­jor pol­i­cy er­ror oc­cur af­ter our coun­try and the pres­i­dent have been mak­ing huge eco­nom­ic progress that is now at risk due to the tar­iffs,” he wrote on X.

Top White House eco­nom­ic ad­vis­er Kevin Has­sett told Fox News Chan­nel’s “FOX & Friends” that Ack­man should “ease off the rhetoric a lit­tle bit.”

He in­sist­ed that oth­er coun­tries, not the Unit­ed States, are “go­ing to bear the brunt of the tar­iffs.”

Bil­lion­aire Elon Musk, a top ad­vis­er to Trump on over­haul­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, ex­pressed skep­ti­cism about tar­iffs over the week­end. Musk has said that tar­iffs would dri­ve up costs for Tes­la, his elec­tric au­tomak­er.

“I hope it is agreed that both Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States should move ide­al­ly in my view to a ze­ro tar­iff sit­u­a­tion, ef­fec­tive­ly cre­at­ing a free trade zone be­tween Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca,” Musk said in a video con­fer­ence with Ital­ian politi­cians.

He added, “That cer­tain­ly has been my ad­vice to the pres­i­dent.”

Navar­ro lat­er told Fox News’ “Sun­day Morn­ing Fu­tures” that Musk “doesn’t un­der­stand” the sit­u­a­tion.

“He sells cars,” Navar­ro said. “That’s what he does.” He added that, “He’s sim­ply pro­tect­ing his own in­ter­ests as any busi­ness per­son would do.”

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Mari Ya­m­aguchi con­tributed from Tokyo.

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and JOSH BOAK

WASH­ING­TON (AP)