Hello and welcome to business matters here on the BBC World Service with me Rahul Tandon and these are turbulent times in the global economy it's been another pretty turbulent twenty four hours volatile is a word that is being used quite a lot so on the program
as we have been doing over the course of the last week or so we're going to try and make sense of what has happened and look ahead to what may happen as well on the program to guide us through it we have Jennifer Pak marketplace correspondent he's based in Shanghai China's financial capital and China very much in the news before we get into what's been happening Jennifer just give us a sense of the conversations you're having with people around you well certainly exporters manufacturers they're all feeling it
because while well I mean let's be honest the tariffs are paid for by importers American companies it is true
that these companies are going back to their Chinese suppliers their exporters who then go back to the fact factories and say hey can you see what you can do can we make a deal can you lower your prices Walmart Costco have already done
that so many more even smaller factories have told us
that their clients are doing the exact same everyone's just trying to find their footing
because China's economy was already a bit sluggish and exports was the one bright spot yep and those share markets in Asia some of them China Hong Kong Japan had pretty rough days on Monday let's see what happens on Tuesday also with us is Peter Marisi very familiar voice here on the program economists columnists with the Washington Times also with the Tao Jones market watch where there's a lot to watch at the moment Peter before we get into our conversation in more detail you've been following studying examining the global economy for some time it's very rare
that we have moments like this isn't it well yes I mean this is a crisis akin to when when Nixon took the the dollar off gold or when we had the the plaza record in 1985 and what I think you have here is is Donald Trump is trying to precipitate an event like that but given the nature of the problems that we face accessing foreign markets he's trying to force negotiations bilaterally with the world and doing it in a way that frankly is is alienating people you know in the short term the Japanese really need the United States the Europeans really need the United States so they're not retaliating so quickly they're looking to negotiate longer term they don't need us quite so much they'll be able to find other ways to defend themselves to arm themselves and so forth I don't know
that this administration or the people around him have such a long view no and we're going to get into some of that conversation a bit later in the program but Peter mentioned Donald Trump we are of course once again talking about his tariffs policy at the Oval Office at an event with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he had this to say when he was asked by reporters whether he would pause those tariffs we're not looking at that we have many many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us and they're going to be fair deals and in certain cases they're going to be be paying substantial tariffs there'll be fair deals let's just remind you of the time frame here those reciprocal tariffs which you'll hear us talking about on this program are due to come in on the 9th of April and Donald Trump repeated his threat against China made earlier today
that he'd impose a third of 50 tariff on top of those already imposed on the country which would mean a total tariff of 104 percent with China
as you know against my statement they put a 34 tariff on above what their ridiculous tariffs were already and I said
if that tariff isn't removed by tomorrow at 12 o'clock we're putting a 50 tariff on above the tariffs that we put on so they've gone for years they become a rich country because of people again
that we're in the White House that allowed this to happen it's been a volatile day hasn't it on those markets the US market was really like a yo-yo going up down up again and then pretty flat the Dow Jones down a little bit the Nasdaq up a tiny bit at the end I've been speaking to Mark Malik chief investment officer at Seabird in New York to gauge the feeling on Wall Street I think starting last Thursday our retail investors were doing what retail investors have done for the past couple of years that winning strategy of trying to buy the dip and you saw that happening a lot on Thursday Friday was a little tougher and today when we woke up this morning two markets down significantly I think today was shoring up to be a sell day in fact we did witness some selling early on sort of non-discriminate sell at the market kind of actions but then of course everything changed the second that report which was ultimately called the false news report came out and that's sort of changed everything and the complete dynamics of the market action for the day yeah buy the dip is the dip is when the markets go lower and people often think that's a good time to buy but you've got to predict how low they could go what are your thoughts on that look the markets are trying to test lows I think the way the market ended up today slightly better was was a positive there's certainly the possibility of the markets trading lower at this point until we see some resolutions or some major policy changes right now we're just sort of trying to read people's faces trying to guess what might happen but until you see any major policy changes we're not going to see a move back up but in terms of this negative bent to the market and high volatility we expect to see
that to continue give us a word to describe the mood of your investors nervy panicky what would you say I would say tender is a good word to describe it I think
that there are some nerves out there people are feeling a little exhausted at this point unable to use
that regular playbook that has worked so well for investors for so long and so they're very I guess nervy tender and exhausted would be my three words I would use beat emery of course you are a columnist for the Dow Jones market watch I'm sure
that you have been through some of those emotions that Mark was talking about there look we're heading to
that deadline day of the 9th of April aren't we for when these reciprocal tariffs comes in so on Tuesday
if Donald Trump seems
like he's going to go ahead with that Peter what do you expect the markets to do well I think