White House says Trump will go ahead with tariffs as nervous world awaits trade war

It was not clear whether those efforts would succeed ahead Wednesday, but the hope is that they would lead Trump to back down in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Trump has argued that American workers and manufacturers have been hurt over the past decades by free-trade deals that have lowered barriers to global commerce and fueled the growth of a $3 trillion U.S. market for imported goods. Factories around the world, from Japan to Britain to the United States, saw activity slump in March as businesses braced for Trump's new tariffs, though some saw a bounce in the race to get goods to consumers before the new measures hit.