Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit the White House on Monday to discuss recently announced tariffs with U.S. President Donald Trump, three Israeli officials said on Saturday.

The impromptu visit was first reported by Axios, which said that if the visit takes place, the Israeli leader would be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump in person to try to negotiate a deal to remove tariffs.

Netanyahu’s office has not confirmed the visit, that would likely also include discussions on Iran and Israel’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

The surprise invite by Trump came in a phone-call on Thursday with Netanyahu, who is presently on a visit to Hungary, when the Israeli leader raised the tariff issue, according to the Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to Reuters.

As part of a sweeping new tariff policy announced by Trump, unspecified Israeli goods exports to the United States face a 17 per cent tariff. The U.S. is Israel’s closest ally and largest single trading partner.

An Israeli finance ministry official said on Thursday that Trump’s latest tariff announcement could impact Israel’s exports of machinery and medical equipment.

Israel had already moved to cancel its remaining tariffs on U.S. imports on Tuesday. The two countries signed a free trade agreement 40 years ago and about 98 per cent of goods from the U.S. are now tax-free.

Deliberations within the Trump team on how to impose tariffs on foreign goods reportedly went down to the wire, with the president finalising his plans just three hours before Wednesday’s announcement, The Washington Post has reported.

The president’s team put up little dissent to the plan to overhaul US trade policy, the newspaper, which spoke to more than a dozen people inside and outside the administration, said.

A senior White House official told the paper: “There were a lot of options put in front of him. I think he just needed time to go through each one and pick out the ones he wanted. The great thing is that the team made everything interchangeable, so it was just a matter of him picking and choosing which ones he wanted to do.”

According to reports, White House trade officials presented a list of concessions from foreign trade partners in the lead up to Wednesday’s tariff announcement.

One foreign diplomat told the paper that Trump officials wanted regulations and other barriers taken away to free up sales of US goods and services abroad.

Nissan Motor is considering shifting some domestic production of US-bound vehicles to America, the Nikkei reported on Saturday.

As early as this summer, Nissan plans to reduce production at its Fukuoka factory in western Japan and shift some manufacturing of its Rogue SUV to the United States to mitigate the impact of Trump’s tariffs, the business newspaper said, without citing the source of its information.

The Japanese automaker’s Rogue SUV, a key model in the U.S. market, is now produced in Fukuoka and the United States, the report said.

On Thursday, Nissan said it would not take new orders from the US for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs after earlier Trump tariff announcements.

The automaker now plans to maintain two shifts of production of the Rogue at its Smyrna, Tennessee, plant after announcing in January it would end one of the two shifts this month.

Nissan sold about 920,000 vehicles in the U.S. last year, of which about 16 per cent were exported from Japan, the Nikkei said, adding the planned production shift could hit local suppliers’ businesses.

China called on Washington to have an “equal-footed consultation” on Saturday after they announced extra levies of 34 per cent on all US goods.

China also announced export curbs on some rare earth materials, escalating the trade war prompted by President Donald Trump’s imposition of additional 34 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US.

The total duties imposed on China by the US this year is now 54 per cent.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Saturday: “Now is the time for the US to stop doing the wrong things and resolve the differences with trading partners through equal-footed consultation”.

President Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that “China played it wrong, they panicked – the one thing they cannot afford to do”.

He also used the platform to double down on his policy, writing: “To the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before”.

The Trump administration has placed a 10 per cent “reciprocal tariff” on the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are external territories of Australia near Antarctica, home to penguins, seals and glaciers.

The islands are entirely uninhabited by humans and only accessible via a two-week voyage from Perth via a boat.

“Nowhere on Earth is safe,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday.

Italy has warned against an escalation in the global trade war sparked by US president Donald Trump’s increased tariffs.

Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti warned on Saturday against the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on the United States in response to Mr Trump’s announcement.

Speaking at a business forum near Milan, Mr Giorgetti said Italy was aiming for a “de-escalation” with the U.S.

“We should avoid launching a policy of counter-tariffs that could be damaging for everyone and especially for us,” Mr Giorgetti said.

Under Trump’s plans Italy, which has a large trade surplus with the United States, will be subject to a general tariff of 20 per cent along with other European Union countries.

President Donald Trump is breaking with decades of globalisation and pursuing protectionism, waging a global trade war on allies and enemies alike. How significant is this shift?

For Carmen Reinhart, a former chief economist of the World Bank and professor at Harvard University, it is a “historical moment”.

He told The Washington Post: “Even if there is paddling back by the administration and even if negotiations start to soften the edges, this is the nail in the coffin of globalisation”.

Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and former White House trade adviser, said on Thursday that Mr Trump’s announcement was “the single biggest trade action in our lifetime”.

Describing the scale of the changes, she added: “This is huge. This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on Earth”.

Mr Trump has said that his high tariffs will deliver a new “Golden Age” that benefits American companies and workers, adding: “We’re going to be an entirely different country, and it’s going to be fantastic for the workers. It’s going to be fantastic for everyone.”

US customs agents began collecting a unilateral 10 per cent tariff on all imports from many countries on Saturday – including the UK.

Higher levies on goods from other trading partners are due to start next week.

The initial 10 per cent charge took effect at 12.01am ET (0401 GMT) on Saturday. The announced plans cause trillions of dollars to be lost from the global stock markets on Friday.

The FTSE 100, made up of the UK’s biggest listed companies, was down 4.95 per cent, the worst one-day fall since Covid hit.

Investors are now concerned that markets could fall even lower in the midst of an international trade war, leading to risk of a market crash. Analysts at major investment bank JPMorgan have also raised the risk of a global recession to 60 per cent, telling clients: “There will be blood.”

“[The tariffs], if sustained, would likely push the US and possibly global economy into recession this year. An update of our probability scenario tree makes this point, raising the risk of a recession this year to 60 per cent,” they say.

But the current drop is not a stock market crash, and many analysts say it is too early to tell whether that is the direction the current slump is heading.

There are higher tariffs for cars and car parts – 25 per cent – which will also extend to all computer imports, including laptops.

The list includes tariff codes for engines, transmissions, lithium-ion batteries and other major components, along with less expensive parts including tires, shock absorbers, spark plug wires and brake hoses.

Trump says the tariffs are the US’s “declaration of independence”.