WSJ What’s News - Relief or More Uncertainty? The World Reacts as Trump Extends Tariff Deadline

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

A.M. Edition for July 8. After President Trump announced a three-week extension for countries to strike trade deals or face new tariffs, WSJ senior reporter Jon Emont explains how America’s top trading partners in Asia and global businesses are reacting. Plus, Trump promises to resume defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine amid growing frustration with Moscow’s continued attacks. And Amazon drags out its Prime Day deals in a bid to lure more shoppers. Luke Vargas hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

America's Asian trade partners get a three-week break on new tariffs. We'll hear how that's going over. Plus President Trump promises to resume defensive weapon shipments to Ukraine, citing frustration with Moscow's continued attacks. I'm disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn't stopped. I'm not happy about it either. And Amazon turns Prime Day into Prime Week as interest in the shopping holiday wanes. It's Tuesday, July 8th.

I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. July 9th is out. Stories Moving Your World Today. July 9th is out, August 1st is in. With the clock running down to strike trade deals with dozens of countries before a Wednesday deadline, President Trump has moved back the goalposts, delaying some of his most punishing duties until the start of next month. He communicated that yesterday via letters to 14 countries, which also specified the tariff rate they'd face if they can't make a deal with Washington.

Asia's benchmark stock indexes moved higher on that news, but just how much relief can a three-week tariff pause really offer? To consider that and more, I'm joined from Singapore by Wall Street Journal senior reporter John Emond. John, we're going to talk about sentiment in just a minute. But first off, I want to be crystal clear here because the news about these letters has sort of come together incrementally over the last 36 hours or so. Is the July 9th deadline for countries to strike deals here or face tariffs

completely off that we push that aside? Yes, that's right. So you can just forget that date. You can forget it ever existed. August 1st is the date to know a variety of trading partners in Asia and elsewhere in the world have until August 1st to strike deals with the United States. And John, if they can't make these deals in these letters, it's spelled out what tariff they're going to be hit with come August 1st.

For some countries, it's roughly in line with what they had come to expect after Liberation Day, the April 2nd announcement. For others, rates are a little higher, others a little bit lower. Yeah, that's right. So there are a couple notable examples where the tariff rate was slashed from maybe extremely high levels near 50 percent to something closer to 30 percent. These were often smaller economies. In general, though, the rates haven't changed substantially,

especially for the big trading partners, and that these are hefty tariffs. Asian economies rely on exporting to the United States, and there was some hope that over many weeks of negotiations, that these countries would succeed at persuading Trump to lower tariffs on them. And by and large, they failed.

The threatened tariffs today were generally about as high as they'd been in April when the tariffs were first introduced by Trump. So for many countries like Indonesia, like Bangladesh, like South Korea, like Japan, they learned today that these weeks of negotiations seemingly have not gotten them anywhere. Are they disappointed then to see that the rate holding kind of where it had been? Yes. In a lot of cases they are.

And certainly businesses in these countries that have been rooting for their government officials to strike deals or at least to make progress in deals are quite disappointed. And also American businesses who source from these countries and then rely on the local governments to effectively negotiate with the U.S. are concerned that maybe the governments in some of these countries are not terribly effective in negotiating, don't understand the urgency. You mentioned American businesses, John. What could these letters and the new tariffs mean for U.S. companies dependent on imports from Asian economies?

So during the first trade war, it was very targeted at China. And it was tough for companies like Walmart and Amazon that buy lots of things from China. But at least then they knew that they could buy similar goods from countries like South Korea or Vietnam or Thailand. Now it looks like even countries like Vietnam or Thailand or Indonesia that companies like Amazon and Walmart had relied on to buy goods from when they stopped buying as much from China. It looks like those countries are going to be heavily targeted too. So there really are no great options for the likes of Walmart.

All right. No great options for businesses and by the sounds of it, more uncertainty for trading partners as well. So this just brings back all the uncertainty that we experienced earlier in Trump's term. Three more weeks for negotiations. And as we know with Trump, things can get extended. So I've spoken to business leaders in the region who have expressed different views and thoughts on this.

One Bangladeshi garment exporter told me that she was feeling shattered that 35% tariffs that are threatened to Bangladesh, that would be really tough for her business. The United States is the largest importer of Bangladeshi garments. And others think this is just sort of a ploy and a gambit by Trump to extract greater concessions in the weeks ahead and we shouldn't take it too seriously and we should just take a big deep breath. Soterios Johnson No sort of easy compromises it sounds like readily at hand and yet some analysts we've spoken to do say particularly in the case of Japan they have some options here, some ways to try to keep shaping President Trump's

calculus in the next few weeks. Michael S. Levin There are certainly things that they can pledge like for example Trump has said in his letters that he wants big investments in the United States. So countries like Japan and South Korea, they have world-class companies that can plausibly announce big investments in the United States and industries like semiconductors or shipbuilding or auto manufacturing. Trump might like that quite a bit.

So they do have cards in their hands. And another option that analysts have brought up is that these countries could just accept higher tariffs for now and let pain hit the American consumer. So for example, in Republican leaning wealthy districts where people like buying nice Japanese cars, maybe those cars will get more expensive and that will get people angry. That's of course a real risk though for the Japanese that that will translate into Trump changing his policies. That was Wall Street Journal senior reporter John Emont. John, thank you so much as always. Thank you so much for having me.

Coming up, we've got the rest of the day's news including a resumption of U.S. weapon shipments to Ukraine and a tweak to airport screening rules that could come as welcome relief to travelers. That's After the Break. President Trump has said he'll resume sending defensive weapons to Ukraine in order to help it withstand Russian attacks after months of trying to draw Moscow into negotiations on ending the war. The announcement comes less than a week after it was disclosed that the Pentagon was withholding a shipment of arms

earmarked for Ukraine, a surprise to the U.S. State Department and members of Congress, as well as Kiev. At a meeting yesterday, Trump expressed disappointment with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a lack of progress on a Ukraine peace deal before issuing the strongest indication so far he wants to strengthen Kiev's defenses. We're gonna send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves.

They're getting hit very hard now. Speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a telephone call on Friday, Trump said he wasn't responsible for the halt in weapons shipments to Kiev. The last major U.S. arms package for Ukraine was on December 30th during the Biden administration. MetaPlatforms is continuing its recruitment push by hiring another top Apple AI researcher as Mark Zuckerberg fuels an arms race for AI talent. We are reporting that Ro Ming Pang is joining Meta's new Super Intelligence AI division

and is set to receive a pay package in the tens of millions of dollars. Zuckerberg is making a string of expensive hires to staff up the new meta unit, offering huge pay packages to attract talent as it seeks to regain momentum in the AI space. Amazon Prime Day is kicking off today, although this year the event will stretch over four days instead of two, as the retailer aims to lure in more shoppers and new Prime members. The sale is expected to bring in a record $12.9 billion in the U.S. according to research firm eMarketer, a 53 percent gain from last year.

The journal's Meg Tanaka explains that this year shoppers will be focused on deeply discounted products as well as buying goods that could be hit by tariffs later in the year. Amazon is facing cautious shoppers who are looking for value and possibly buying early to avoid future price hikes, including early holiday shopping. Most of the analysts and sellers that I spoke to expect the biggest sales to happen in the first day or the first few days. Amazon is also using this moment to target younger buyers with its recently relaunched

Prime for Young Adults and is also testing its AI shopping assistant Rufus. It's part of a bigger push to lock in long-term loyalty amidst stiff competition and slowing growth. And finally, your laptop and other large electronic devices may still need to come out of your bag for screening, but American air travelers could soon be spared the annoyance of taking off their shoes while going through security. Almost 20 years after it began requiring shoe removal, after continuing threats following a failed shoe bombing shortly after 9-11, people familiar with the matter say that the Transportation Security Administration is rolling out new procedures to end the policy.

The TSA said it's always exploring ways to enhance the passenger experience without confirming when the change will occur. So I guess I'm sticking with my Velcro sneakers for now. And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevent and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer was Sondra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show.

Until then, thanks for listening.