Manufacturers struggling to make long-term plans. Farmers facing retaliation from Chinese buyers. U.S. households burdened with higher prices.

Republican senators are confronting the Trump administration with those worries and many more as they fret about the economic impact of the president's sweeping tariff strategy that went into effect Wednesday.

By declaring a trade war on the rest of the world, President Donald Trump has panicked global financial markets, raised the risk of a recession and broken the political and economic alliances that made much of the world stable for business after World War II.

Trump's latest round of tariffs went into full effect at midnight Wednesday, with higher import tax rates on dozens of countries and territories taking hold.

Asian and European shares slid on Wednesday, with Japan's Nikkei 225 dipping more than 5%, as the latest set of U.S. tariffs including a massive 104% levy on Chinese imports took effect.

The Nikkei 225 lost 3.9% to 31,714.03. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng lost 0.4% to 20,041.03, while the Shanghai Composite index reversed early losses, gaining 0.9%. to 3,173.56. Taiwan led losses in Asia, as its Taiex plunged 5.8%.

Elon Musk on Tuesday described Peter Navarro, a senior White House trade advisor, as "truly a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks" in a growing rift over Donald Trump's tariff policy.

Musk, a key aide to the president, has signaled opposition to the tariffs, and the Tesla CEO hit out after Navarro described him as "not a car manufacturer" but "a car assembler."

China said Tuesday it would "fight to the end" and take countermeasures against the United States to safeguard its own interests after President Donald Trump threatened an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports.

The Commerce Ministry said the U.S.'s imposition of "so-called 'reciprocal tariffs'" on China is "completely groundless and is a typical unilateral bullying practice."

In the early days of the Great Depression, Rep. Willis Hawley, a Republican from Oregon, and Utah Republican Sen. Reed Smoot thought they had landed on a way to protect American farmers and manufacturers from foreign competition: tariffs.

President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, even as many economists warned that the levies would prompt retaliatory tariffs from other countries, which is precisely what happened. The U.S. economy plunged deeper into a devastating financial crisis that it would not pull out of until World War II.

President Donald Trump's sharp tariff hikes last week have sent the stock market into a tailspin, raised alarm bells among Wall Street executives, and heightened many economists' worries that the U.S. could tip into recession.

The tariffs, set to take effect Wednesday, include a 10% blanket duty on nearly all countries and additional import taxes on 60 nations. The increases are so large and are taking effect so rapidly that they are likely to be disruptive to the economy, economists say, even if they are partially rolled back through negotiations in the coming weeks or months.

Wall Street could soon be in the claws of another bear market as the Trump administration's tariff blitz fuels fears that the added taxes on imported goods from around the world will sink the global economy.

The last bear market happened in 2022, but this decline feels more like the sudden, turbulent bear market of 2020, when the benchmark S&P 500 index tumbled 34% in a one-month period, the shortest bear market ever.

Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company's 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.

Microsoft accused one of the workers in a termination letter Monday of misconduct "designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event." Microsoft says the other worker had already announced her resignation, but on Monday it ordered her to leave five days early.

President Donald Trump remained defiant on Monday as global markets continued plunging and fears of a recession grew after his tariff announcement last week.

He said other countries had been "taking advantage of the Good OL' USA!" in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform.