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The administration’s plans to impose what Trump calls reciprocal tariffs have left investors, executives, government officials and consumers around the world guessing what lies ahead.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices edged higher on Wednesday as market participants braced for U.S. reciprocal tariffs due to be announced at 2000 GMT, which could exacerbate a global trade war and dampen demand for crude. Brent futures were up 13 cents, or 0.2%, at $74.62 a barrel by 10:53 a.m. EDT (1453 GMT). U.S. crude inventories posted a surprise large build of about 6.2 million barrels last week, Energy Information Administration data showed.

(Reuters) -Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee on Tuesday said while the "hard" data show the underlying U.S. economy is solid, the labor market strong, and inflation down from its peak in 2022, the imposition of a broad new set of tariffs under President Donald Trump could lead to renewed inflation or an economic slowdown. With imports accounting for just 11% of the U.S. economy, Goolsbee said in an interview on Fox News, the impact of tariffs on overall prices could be limited. "The fear is if it jumps out of the 11% lane," he said, either because import levies are applied to components and parts and raise the cost of production in a broad set of industries, "or people start freaking out and change their behavior; and if the consumer stops spending or businesses stop investing because they're uncertain or they're afraid where we're headed, that would be a bit of a mess."

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Lackluster new U.S. jobs data and a weak report on manufacturing highlight an emerging concern among Federal Reserve officials that employment could slip even as the risk of a tariff-driven round of inflation limits their ability to do anything about it. Data on hiring and layoffs for February showed a job market that was potentially losing steam more broadly, with a drop in job openings, a slight rise in layoffs, worker quit rates similar to those during the languid job market of the mid-2010s, and near balance in the demand for and supply of available employees. "The small signals the market is showing point to retrenchment rather than expansion," Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote after the release of the job openings and layoffs data for February.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Investors in financial derivatives called U.S. inflation swaps are betting that President Donald Trump's tariffs will have a hefty short-term impact on consumer prices that will recede in the next few years as recession concerns escalate. Inflation swaps are used to hedge against a rise in prices. Specifically, the receiver agrees to exchange with the payer a fixed amount for floating payments tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for a given notional amount and period of time.

The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors has expressed concerns over President Donald Trump’s impending tariffs – set to go into effect on Wednesday. The post Wholesaler association says impending tariffs may worsen inflation appeared first on FreightWaves.