Global stocks continue to fall, and fears of a recession are growing, after Donald Trump rejected calls to scale back his order to institute sweeping tariffs on most of the world. The move will be especially perilous for small, heavily indebted countries in the Global South who face punitive tariffs, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh and 48% for Laos. “What is really striking is not the sheer stupidity of it … but the wanton cruelty of it,” says Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
