Tariffs kick in, Wall Street tumbles as China and Canada retaliate

News For the second day in a row, Wall Street stocks fell sharply after tariffs and sanctions were announced by governments around the world This article was originally written by our sister publication Broadband Communities Canada and China have announced retaliatory measures after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on both countries, beginning today. On Tuesday, the Dow Jones fell by over 670 points . The plunge follows another dip Monday, when the Dow fell 1.5 percent . Also on Tuesday, according to CNN , Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada would place tariffs on over $20 billion of U.S. goods. China, along with their own retaliatory tariffs, has also added U.S. firms in the defense and technology sector to an “unreliable entities list,” and implemented import controls, according to BBC News . Additionally, reporting has revealed that the back-and-forth with tariffs may impact the cost of consumer goods like smartphones. “In the lead-up to January’s CES, the massive expo held every year in Las Vegas, the Consumer Technology Association put out an eye-popping estimate: smartphones could soon cost Americans about $213 more, on average — a hike of more than 25 percent,” reported Lily Jamali , a BBC News North American technology correspondent. Trump’s tariffs began at midnight, March 4, and have targeted imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. According to a fact sheet put out by the White House Tuesday, tariffs on Canada and Mexico were implemented under an act known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act “to combat the extraordinary threat to U.S. national security, including our public health posed by unchecked drug trafficking.” Critics meanwhile have said tariffs will drive up prices for U.S. consumers  and have pointed out that only minor amounts of fentanyl, 43 of the 21,889 pounds of fentanyl seized by U.S. authorities in 2024 , have been sourced from Canada. Latest developments cause growing concern Previously, experts like Brian Hendricks, VP of Policy and Public Affairs for Nokia Americas, have questioned Trump’s approach . When describing the state of affairs in Washington D.C. last month, Hendricks said there’s “nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” He called Trump’s tariff tendencies “extremely difficult to predict” and said they could counterproductively impact stated policy objectives of Trump’s own presidency. “Manufacturing coming back to the United States is certainly something we support,” he said. However, Hendricks said a lot of manufacturing will require a high degree of automation to justify various business cases. “For that to happen, you need high-quality, reliable networks that are available with massive throughput, low latency, and high reliability,” he said. “And if it becomes difficult to build those, then you’re actually pulling both ends of the rope and making it very difficult to achieve your aims.” In the days since, some have gone even further, like Andrew Wilson, the deputy secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce, who told the Wall Street Journal  that the tariffs “could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory.” This Sunday, the Mexican government has additionally pledged to announce further details about their response to American tariffs,  according to BBC News. Click here to learn more about Connected America 2025, happening March 11-12 in Dallas Also in the news: VEON looks to local language LLM creation for revenue growth Huawei ICT Services & Software Enable Digital Intelligence Acceleration BT urges SMEs to go digital