Stocks surge as tariffs delayed

STOCKS rocketed yesterday as a relief rally spread through markets after President Donald Trump paused crippling tariffs on US partners, with Chinese investors even brushing off his decision to ramp up duties on Beijing to 125% .

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The across-the-board gains tracked a blistering performance on Wall Street as the US president said he would delay for 90 days measures announced last week that set off a firestorm on trading floors and sparked global recession fears.

Trump said he would keep in place a basic levy of 10% on dozens of countries, but upped the ante in his brutal trade war with superpower rival China by hitting it even harder after it retaliated.

China's own 84% retaliatory measures kicked in yesterday, later saying that the US “goes against the whole world” with the measures, and called on Washington to “meet halfway’.

Trump made the decision to delay because investors were “jumping a little bit out of line’, he said, after markets collapsed and US Treasuries showed signs of cracking.

People “were getting yippy, a little bit afraid’, he added, referring to a term in sports to describe a loss of nerves.