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US buyers have begun halting orders from Bangladesh, the world’s second-biggest garment manufacturer, after punishing US tariffs, leaders of the South Asian nation’s critical industry warned on Monday.Textile and garment production accounts for about 80 percent of exports in Bangladesh and the industry has been rebuilding after it was hit hard in a student-led revolution that toppled the government last year.US President Donald Trump hit Bangladesh with punishing new tariffs of 37 percent on Wednesday, hiking duties from the previous 16 percent on cotton products.Mohammad Mushfiqur Rahman, managing director of Essensor Footwear and Leather Products, said he received a letter from one of his buyers requesting a shipment halt.”My buyer asked me to stop a shipment of leather goods — including bags, belts, and wallets — worth $300,000 on Sunday,” Rahman told AFP.”He’s a long-time buyer and now both of us are in limbo over the issue.”Rahman, who has been operating since 2008, usually sends goods averaging about $100,000 to the United States every month.Bangladesh exported approximately $8.4 billion worth of goods to the United States last year, of which $7.34 billion came from the ready-made garments sector.Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo also quoted AKM Saifur Rahman, CEO of ready-made garments producer Wikitex-BD, saying that his US buyer had requested a halt to a shipment worth $150,000.”My US buyer said it is not possible to pass the extra cost on to their clients, so we need to lower the price”, Rahman told the daily.- ‘Request your patience’ -Md Anwar Hossain, government-appointed administrator of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), sent a letter to US-based buyers pleading for understanding.”We are aware that several brands and retailers have already reached out to their Bangladeshi suppliers, expressing concern and, in some cases, discussing possible measures to mitigate the impact”, Hossain wrote.”We understand the urgency, but transferring the burden downstream to suppliers at this early stage will only exacerbate the stress,” he added.”We humbly request your patience and support during this period as Bangladesh pursues a meaningful resolution.”But former BGMEA director Mohiuddin Rubel said some buyers have already asked for shipments to be put on hold until further notice.”In particular, smaller buyers are pressuring suppliers to either absorb the full tariff, or share the cost,” Rubel told AFP.Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus, who held an emergency meeting on Saturday to assess the impact of the tariffs, is writing to Trump about the impact, his press secretary Shafiqul Alam said Sunday.

Monday’s stock market collapses in Asia and Europe after China retaliated to steep US tariffs revived memories of similar market turmoil after the Covid pandemic and the last global financial crisis.Analysts called the falls “historic” and some even described it as a “bloodbath”, recalling previous collapses since the start of the last century.- 2020: Pandemic -Global stocks crashed in March 2020 after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, putting much of the world under lockdown. On March 12, 2020 — the day after the announcement — Paris fell 12 percent, Madrid 14 percent and Milan 17 percent. London dropped 11 percent and New York 10 percent in the worst fall since 1987.Further falls came over the following days, with US indexes dropping more than 12 percent.The rapid response by national governments, which dug deep to keep their economies afloat, helped most markets rebound within months.- 2008: Subprime crisis -The 2008 global financial crisis was caused by bankers in the United States giving subprime mortgages to people on shaky financial footing and then selling them off as investments, fuelling a housing boom.When borrowers became unable to pay their mortgages, millions lost their homes, the stock market crashed and the banking system buckled, culminating with the dramatic bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers.From January to October that year, the world’s main stock markets fell between 30 and 50 percent.- 2000: Dot.com bubble -The start of the millennium saw the deflation of the tech bubble caused by venture capitalists throwing money at unproven companies.From a record 5,048.62 points on March 10, 2000, the US tech-heavy Nasdaq index lost 39.3 percent in value over the year.Many internet startups went out of business.- 1987: Black Monday -Wall Street crashed on October 19, 1987, on the back of large US trade and budget deficits and interest rates hikes. The Dow Jones index lost 22.6 percent, causing panic on markets worldwide.- 1929: Wall Street collapse -October 24, 1929 became known as “Black Thursday” on Wall Street after a bull market imploded, causing the Dow Jones to lose more than 22 percent of its value at the start of trade.Stocks recouped most lost ground during the day but the rot set in: October 28 and 29 also saw huge losses in a crisis that marked the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States and a global economic crisis.burs-phz/lth

Hong Kong small-time investors were left reeling on Monday as US President Donald Trump’s punishing tariffs and Beijing’s retaliation saw the city’s stock market suffer its worst day in almost three decades.The benchmark Hang Seng Index fell by 13.2 percent — its biggest drop since 1997 during the Asian financial crisis — as a wider selloff played out across in Asian markets also spurred by China’s retaliatory levies.At a securities brokerage in Hong Kong’s finance district, where more than a dozen elderly investors stared at numbers flashing red on computer screens, the mood was grim.A woman in her nineties surnamed Tam said she “hated” Trump.”He cost me HK$200,000 ($25,700),” she said.”He’s nonsensical, he says one thing and changes his mind a few minutes later… How can someone in such a lofty position act like that?”None of the Hang Seng Index’s 83 constituent stocks escaped losses on Monday.Among the biggest losers were Lenovo Group, which plunged 23 percent, and Alibaba Group, down 18 percent.”(Trump) won’t let it go, he’s making a mess,” said another retiree surnamed Lee.”Everyone around me is losing money.”The Chinese finance hub resumed trading on Monday after a three-day break, which worsened the drawdown, according to Stanley Chik, head of research at Bright Smart Securities.”For Hong Kong equities, it is rare to see across-the-board losses to this extent,” Chik told AFP, though he said they were on par with how US markets reacted.Hong Kong’s stock market had outperformed the United States since Trump took office, but Monday’s rout wiped out HSI gains from the first quarter of this year.Investors in the city have taken a wait-and-see approach for weeks as Trump finalised his trade policies, Chik said, adding that the mood was not yet one of “despair”.Hong Kong tops the world in retail investor participation, with one 2023 survey showing that 48 percent of the respondents held or traded stocks in the preceding year.A 35-year-old man surnamed Tsang said his long-term investments lost around $12,900 on Monday, but he would not consider selling yet.”I didn’t expect it to get so bad,” said Tsang, a Hong Kong commercial bank employee.China A-shares may be more resilient, he added. “In this sort of fight (between China and the United States), it’s hard to say who will suffer more.”Lawyer Ray Chan, 30, was among those left unscathed on Monday, as he sold all his Hong Kong and US shareholdings two weeks ago, netting gains in the seven figures.”We’re clearly entering a bear market but I’m prepared,” Chan told AFP. “When (Trump) said there would be tariffs on April 2, I could guess where things were headed.”It will take “at least a year” before he returns to the market, Chan said.

A global stock market rout deepened on Monday, with Hong Kong crashing as US President Donald Trump stood firm on tariffs despite fears that his trade war could spark a recession.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index sank 13.2 percent, its biggest drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, while Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell an eye-watering 7.8 percent. Countries mostly have been scrambling to blunt the new US tariffs without retaliating, but Beijing is responding in kind, escalating the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.A 10-percent “baseline” tariff on imports from around the world took effect on Saturday but a slew of countries will be hit by higher duties from Wednesday, with levies of 34 percent for Chinese goods and 20 percent for EU products.Beijing announced last week its own 34-percent tariff on US goods, which will come into effect on Thursday.The tit-for-tat duties “are aimed at bringing the United States back onto the right track of the multilateral trade system”, Chinese vice commerce minister Ling Ji said.”The root cause of the tariff issue lies in the United States,” Ling told representatives of US companies on Sunday, according to his ministry.EU trade ministers will weigh their response at a meeting on Monday, with the bloc’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, telling reporters in Luxembourg that they were facing a “paradigm shift of the global trading system”.- Recession fears -Trump on Sunday doubled down on his demand to slash deficits with trading partners, saying he would not cut any deals unless that was resolved.”Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said.He told reporters aboard Air Force One that world leaders were “dying to make a deal”.Trillions of dollars have been wiped off stocks worldwide since Trump announced the tariffs last week, and the losses deepened on Monday.Taipei recorded its heaviest loss on record as it sank 9.7 percent.In Europe, Frankfurt’s DAX sank as much as 10 percent in early deals before paring back losses. The German index and Paris were down over six percent in late morning deals, while London fell 4.5 percent.US markets were expected to open deep in the red later on Monday.The main US oil contract dropped below $60 a barrel for the first time since April 2021 on worries of a global recession.- ‘Deals and alliances’ -“(This) is blunt-force economic warfare,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management.”The market’s telling you in plain language: global demand is vanishing, and a global recession is on the cards and coming on fast,” Innes said.Trump’s staggered deadlines have left space for some countries to negotiate, even as he insisted he would stand firm and his administration warned against any retaliation.”More than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation,” Kevin Hassett, head of the White House National Economic Council, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whose country faces a 24-percent levy, said on Monday that Tokyo would present Trump with a “package” of measures to win relief from US tariffs ahead of a mooted call between the leaders.Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel — hit with 17 percent tariffs, despite being one of Washington’s closest allies — was due on Monday to become the first leader to meet Trump since last week’s announcement.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned in a newspaper op-ed that “the world as we knew it has gone”, saying the status quo would increasingly hinge on “deals and alliances”.Vietnam, a manufacturing powerhouse that counted the United States as its biggest export market in the first quarter, has already reached out and requested a delay of at least 45 days to thumping 46-percent tariffs imposed by Trump.- ‘Bad actors’ -US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump has “created maximum leverage for himself”.”I think we’re going to have to see what the countries offer and whether it’s believable,” Bessent said.Other countries have been “bad actors for a long time and it’s not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks”, he said.Trump and US officials have rejected arguments that the tariffs would reignite inflation and damage the US economy.Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff guru, shrugged off investor panic.”You can’t lose money unless you sell,” he said, promising “the biggest boom in the stock market we’ve ever seen”.

Asian and European equities collapsed on a black Monday for markets after China hammered the United States with its own hefty tariffs, ramping up a trade war many fear could spark a recession.Trading floors were overcome by a wave of selling as investors fled to the hills, with Hong Kong’s loss of 13.22 percent its worst in nearly three decades. Taipei socks suffered their worst fall on record, tanking 9.7 percent, while Frankfurt dived 10 percent and Tokyo shed almost eight percent.Futures for Wall Street’s markets were also taking another drubbing, while commodities slumped.US President Donald Trump sparked a market meltdown last week when he unveiled sweeping tariffs against US trading partners for what he said was years of being ripped off and claimed that governments were lining up to cut deals with Washington.But after Asian markets closed on Friday, China said it would impose retaliatory levies of 34 percent on all US goods from April 10. Beijing also imposed export controls on seven rare earth elements, including gadolinium — commonly used in MRIs — and yttrium, utilised in consumer electronics.On Sunday, vice commerce minister Ling Ji told representatives of US firms that Trump’s tariffs “firmly protect the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises, including American companies”.Hopes that the US president would rethink his policy in light of the turmoil were dashed Sunday when he said he would not make a deal with other countries unless trade deficits were solved.”Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said of the ructions that have wiped trillions of dollars off company valuations.- No sector spared -The savage selling in Asia was across the board, with no sector unharmed — tech firms, car makers, banks, casinos and energy firms all felt the pain as investors abandoned riskier assets.Among the biggest losers, Chinese ecommerce titans Alibaba tanked 18 percent and rival JD.com shed 15.5 percent, while Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank dived more than 12 percent and Sony gave up 10 percent.Hong Kong’s 13-percent drop marked its worst day since 1997 during the Asian financial crisis — while Frankfurt plunged 10 percent at one point.Shanghai shed more than seven percent, with China’s state-backed fund Central Huijin Investment vowing to help ensure “stable operations” of the market.Singapore plunged nearly eight percent, while Seoul gave up more than five percent, triggering a so-called sidecar mechanism — for the first time in eight months — that briefly halted some trading. Sydney, Wellington, Manila and Mumbai were also deep in the red, while London and Paris both dropped around five percent. “We could see a recession happen very quickly in the US, and it could last through the year or so, it could be rather lengthy,” said Steve Cochrane, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Moody’s Analytics. “If there’s a recession in the US, of course, China will feel it as well because demand for its goods will be hit even harder,” he added.Concerns about demand saw oil prices sink more than three percent at one point Monday, having dropped around seven percent Friday. Both main contracts are now sitting at their lowest levels since 2021. Copper — a vital component for energy storage, electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines — also extended losses.- Carnage on Wall Street -The losses followed another day of carnage on Wall Street on Friday, where all three main indexes fell almost six percent.”Over Thursday and Friday, the S&P 500 fell by a massive 10.53 percent in total, making it the fifth-worst two-day performance since World War Two,” said analysts at Deutsche Bank.”Indeed, the only other times we’ve seen a double-digit loss over two sessions were during Covid-19, the height of the (global financial crisis), and Black Monday 1987.”That showing came after Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell said US tariffs will likely cause inflation to rise and growth to slow, and warned of an “elevated” risk of higher unemployment.”Powell’s hands are tied,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management. “He’s acknowledged the obvious — that tariffs are inflationary and recessionary — but he’s not signalling a rescue.” While Powell has so far refused to announce any rate cuts, markets are betting he will do soon.- Key figures around 0815 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 7.8 percent at 31,136.58 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 13.2 percent at 19,828.30 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 7.3 percent at 3,096.58 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 4.6 percent at 7,686.66West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 4.1 percent at $59.41 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 4.0 percent at $62.99 per barrelDollar/yen: DOWN at 145.80 yen from 146.98 yen on FridayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.1019 from $1.0962Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2911 from $1.2893Euro/pound: UP at 85.36 pence from 85.01 penceNew York – Dow: DOWN 5.5 percent at 38,314.86 (close) 

Panic selling gripped global markets on Monday, as US President Donald Trump refused to budge on his swingeing tariffs despite China retaliating and global recession warnings growing louder.Countries across the world have been scrambling to blunt the edge of the new US tariffs, but Beijing signalled it was taking the levies head on, escalating the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.Trump doubled down on his demand to slash deficits with the US’ trading partners, saying he would not cut any deals unless that was resolved.”Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump said on Sunday.He told reporters aboard Air Force One that world leaders are “dying to make a deal.”Trump announced last week a baseline 10-percent import tariff on goods coming into the United States and higher rates for many countries including allies the European Union, Japan and Taiwan.Most countries have stopped short of retaliating but China announced on Friday — after Asian markets closed — retaliatory tariffs of 34 percent on all US goods from April 10. “(This) is blunt-force economic warfare,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management.”The market’s telling you in plain language: global demand is vanishing, and a global recession is on the cards and coming on fast,” Innes said.Trillions of dollars have been wiped off stocks worldwide, and on Monday Asian equities took an even heavier hammering as investors moved to safer assets.In Japan the Nikkei was off an eye-watering 6.5 percent, falling almost eight percent in early trade. In Hong Kong the Hang Seng plunged almost 10 percent and the Shanghai Composite more than four percent. Taiwan’s main index — like in Hong Kong and Shanghai closed on Friday — plummeted almost 10 percent and Singapore 8.5 percent.Futures contracts for the New York Stock Exchange’s main boards were sharply down Sunday, suggesting more pain for battered Wall Street stocks when markets open Monday.US oil dropped below $60 a barrel for the first time since April 2021 on worries of a global recession.- ‘Deals and alliances’ -Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel — which has been hit with 17 percent tariffs, despite being one of Washington’s closest allies — was due Monday to become the first leader to meet Trump since last week’s announcement.Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned in a newspaper op-ed that “the world as we knew it has gone,” saying the status quo would increasingly hinge on “deals and alliances.”Trump’s staggered deadlines have left space for some countries to negotiate, even as he insisted he would stand firm and his administration warned against any retaliation.”More than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation,” Kevin Hassett, head of the White House National Economic Council, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday, citing the US Trade Representative.Vietnam, a manufacturing powerhouse that counted the US as its biggest export market in the first quarter, has already reached out and requested a delay of at least 45 days to thumping 46 percent tariffs imposed by Trump.- ‘Bad actors’ -Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also told NBC’s Meet the Press that 50 countries had reached out.But as for whether Trump will negotiate with them, “I think that’s a decision for President Trump,” Bessent said. “At this moment he’s created maximum leverage for himself… I think we’re going to have to see what the countries offer, and whether it’s believable,” Bessent said. Other countries have been “bad actors for a long time, and it’s not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks,” he claimed.Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff guru, has pushed back against the mounting nervousness and insisted to investors that “you can’t lose money unless you sell,” promising “the biggest boom in the stock market we’ve ever seen.”Russia has not been targeted by the latest raft of tariffs, and Hassett cited talks with Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine as the reason for their omission from the hit list.On Wednesday a White House official suggested the reason for Russia’s omission was because trade was negligible thanks to sanctions.Trump has long insisted that countries around the world that sell products to the United States are in fact ripping Americans off, and he sees tariffs as a means to right that wrong.”Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!” Trump wrote on Truth social Sunday.But many economists have warned that tariffs are passed on to US consumers and that they could see price rises at home.”I don’t think that you’re going to see a big effect on the consumer in the US,” Hassett said.

Asian markets collapsed Monday after China hammered the United States with its own hefty tariffs, ramping up a trade war that many fear could spark a recession.Trading floors were overcome by a wave of selling as investors fled to the hills on the worst day for equities since the pandemic, with Hong Kong shedding more than 10 percent, Tokyo diving eight percent and Taipei more than nine percent.Futures for Wall Street’s markets were also taking another hammering, while concerns about the impact on demand also saw commodities slump.Donald Trump sparked a market meltdown last week when he unveiled sweeping tariffs against US trading partners for what he says was years of being ripped off and claiming that governments were lining up to cut deals with Washington.But after Asian markets closed on Friday, China said it would impose retaliatory levies of 34 percent on all US goods from April 10. It also imposed export controls on seven rare earth elements, including gadolinium — commonly used in MRIs — and yttrium, utilised in consumer electronics.Hopes that the US president would rethink his policy in light of the turmoil were dashed Sunday when he said he would not make a deal with other countries unless trade deficits were solved.He denied that he was intentionally engineering a selloff and insisted he could not foresee market reactions.”Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said of the ructions that have wiped trillions of dollars off company valuations.– No sector spared –The selling in Asia was across the board, with no sector unharmed by the savage selling — tech firms, car makers, banks, casinos and energy firms all felt the pain as investors abandoned riskier assets.Among the biggest losers, Chinese ecommerce titans Alibaba and JD.com tanked more than 11 percent, while Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank dived more than 10 percent.Shanghai shed more than five percent and Singapore more than six percent, while Seoul gave up more than five percent triggering a so-called sidecar mechanism — for the first time in eight months — that briefly halted some trading. Concerns about demand saw oil prices sink more than three percent Monday, having dropped around seven percent Friday. Both main contracts are now sitting at their lowest levels since 2021. Copper — a vital component for energy storage, electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines — also extended losses.”The market is in free-fall mode again, punching through floors,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management. “Trump’s team isn’t blinking. The tariffs are being treated as a victory lap, not a bargaining chip.”The losses followed another day of carnage on Wall Street on Friday, where all three main indexes fell almost six percent.That came after Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell said US tariffs will likely cause inflation to rise and growth to slow and warned of an “elevated” risk of higher unemployment.The measures by Trump are likely to give US central bankers a headache as they try to balance the need for interest rate cuts to support the economy with the need to keep a lid on prices.His comments came after Trump had insisted “my policies will never change” and urged the Fed to cut rates.”Powell’s hands are tied,” said Innes. “He’s acknowledged the obvious — that tariffs are inflationary and recessionary — but he’s not signalling a rescue. “And that’s the problem. This time, the Fed’s inflation mandate is forcing it to keep the safety net rolled up while asset prices get torched.”Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade, said: “Traders are nervously watching the two biggest economies going toe to toe on tariffs and are fearing that both could receive knockout blows from a prolonged economic fight.”Neither the US nor China are backing down when it comes to slapping new tariffs on each other and in this escalatory environment it’s not surprising to see that risk assets are being avoided like the plague.”- Key figures around 0230 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 6.5 percent at 31,591.84Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 9.3 percent at 20,725.20Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 6.1 percent at 3,138.32West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 2.2 percent at $60.66 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 2.2 percent at $64.14 per barrelDollar/yen: DOWN at 146.04 yen from 146.98 yen on FridayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.0964 from $1.0962Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2908 from $1.2893Euro/pound: DOWN at 84.94 pence from 85.01 penceNew York – Dow: DOWN 5.5 percent at 38,314.86 (close) London – FTSE 100: DOWN 5.0 percent at 8,054.98 (close)

US President Donald Trump said Sunday that China would have agreed to a deal on the sale of TikTok if it were not for the tariffs imposed by Washington on Beijing last week.Trump on Friday extended the deadline for TikTok to find a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban in the United States, allowing 75 more days to find a solution — a day after imposing additional 34 percent duties on all Chinese imports.”The report is that we had a deal, pretty much for TikTok, not a deal, but pretty close, and then China changed the deal because of tariffs. If I gave a little cut in tariffs, they’d approve that deal in 15 minutes, which shows you the power of tariffs,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.The hugely popular video-sharing app, which has more than 170 million American users, is under threat from a US law passed last year that orders TikTok to split from its Chinese owner ByteDance or get shut down in the United States.Trump had insisted his administration was near a deal to find a buyer for TikTok and keep it from shutting down that would involve multiple investors, but gave few details.ByteDance, while confirming that it was in talks with the US government towards finding a solution, warned that there remained “key matters” to solve.”An agreement has not been executed” and whatever was decided would be “subject to approval under Chinese law,” the company added.

Vietnam has asked for a last-minute delay to colossal tariffs imposed by Washington as government figures showed on Sunday that its economy grew at a slightly slower pace in the first quarter.The Southeast Asian manufacturing powerhouse counted the United States as its biggest export market in the first three months of the year but its key customer has now hit it with a thumping 46 percent tariff.The move is part of a furious new global trade blitz announced Wednesday by US President Donald Trump that has sent markets around the world into a tailspin.However, top leader To Lam has asked Trump for a delay of at least 45 days to the new 46 percent tariff, according to a copy of a formal letter seen by AFP.In the letter, Lam said he had appointed Deputy Prime Minister Ho Duc Phoc to serve as the primary contact with the US side on the issue, “with the aim of reaching an agreement as soon as possible”.He also said he hoped to meet Trump in Washington at the end of May to finalise the matter.Trump said on Friday he had had “a very productive” call with Lam, who he said wanted to make a deal on tariffs.Gross domestic product in Vietnam during the first quarter grew 6.93 percent year-on-year, down slightly from the 7.55 expansion in the final quarter of last year, Vietnam’s General Statistics Office said Sunday.Despite the challenge presented by US levies, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said a target of “at least eight percent” growth this year remains unchanged, the government’s official news portal said.To achieve its goal, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance has determined that the economy will need to grow between 8.2 and 8.4 percent in the remaining quarters, the government said.- ‘Significant damage’ -The US tariffs threaten to “significantly damage” Vietnam’s current growth model, which relies heavily on exports to the United States, said Sayaka Shiba, senior country risk analyst at research firm BMI.She said that, in the worst-case scenario, Vietnam could suffer a three-percent hit to GDP this year.Trump has claimed the Communist country charges the United States a 90 percent tariff, a figure based on Vietnam’s trade surplus with the United States, worth $123.5 billion last year.Experts believe the new tariffs will hit hardest in sectors such as seafood, garments, footwear, wood, electronics and smartphones.Major US corporations with manufacturing operations in Vietnam, including Nike and Adidas, are likely to see orders decrease and reductions in revenue, potentially leading to factory downsizing and job losses, Pham Van Dai, a lecturer in economics at Fulbright University Vietnam, told AFP.Business groups have also called on the Trump administration to delay the imposition of reciprocal tariffs.The American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that they sent a joint letter Saturday to the US commerce secretary expressing “deep concern” over the policy and urging a delay.Vietnam’s exports rose 10.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, official data showed, increasing significantly from 7.9 percent growth in the final quarter of 2024.Industrial production was up 7.8 percent year-on-year, slowing from an 11.5 percent expansion in the previous quarter.Experts believe investors are still holding a “wait and see” mentality amid the uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.”Now is the worst time for investors to make long-term decisions,” said Dai, adding that they are waiting for “clearer policies from the United States and (other) countries’ responses”.

Bangladesh’s interim leader called an emergency meeting on Saturday after textile leaders in the world’s second-largest garment manufacturing nation said US tariffs were a “massive blow” to the key industry.Textile and garment production accounts for about 80 percent of exports in the South Asian country, and the industry has been rebuilding after it was hard hit in a revolution that toppled the government last year.US President Donald Trump on Wednesday slapped punishing new tariffs of 37 percent on Bangladesh, hiking duties from the previous 16 percent on cotton and 32 percent on polyester products.Bangladesh exports $8.4 billion of garments annually to the United States, according to data from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the national trade body.That totals around 20 percent of Bangladesh’s total ready-made garments exports.Interim leader Muhammad Yunus “convened an emergency meeting… to discuss the US tariff issue,” the government said in a statement.Sheikh Bashiruddin, who holds the commerce portfolio in the government, told reporters after the meeting that Yunus “will raise the issue with the US administration”.Bashiruddin said he believed Bangladesh would “not be severely affected”, adding that some other competitors faced “much higher than those on us”.Yunus’ senior advisor Khalilur Rahman said the government had been readying for the tariff hike, and had began talks with US officials in February.”I have already spoken with several State Department officials,” Rahman said on Saturday. “The discussions are ongoing. We will take the necessary steps based on these discussions.”Bangladesh’s tax authority, the National Board of Revenue, is also expected to meet to review the fallout from the tariffs.Rakibul Alam Chowdhury, chairman of RDM Group, a major manufacturer with an estimated $25 million turnover, said on Thursday that the industry would lose trade.”Buyers will go to other cost-competitive markets — this is going to be a massive blow for our industry,” he said.Several garment factories produce clothing for the US market alone.Anwar Hossain, administrator of the BGMEA, has told AFP that the industry was “not ready” for the tariff impact.Bangladesh, the second-largest producer after China, manufactures garments for global brands — including for US firms such as Gap Inc, Tommy Hilfiger and Levi Strauss.