Washington DC - Panic selling gripped global markets on Monday as President Donald Trump refused to budge on his swingeing tariffs despite China retaliating and global recession warnings growing louder.

Countries across the world have been scrambling to blunt the edge of the new US tariffs, but Beijing signalled it was taking the levies head on, escalating the trade war between the world's two biggest economies.

Trump doubled down on his demand to slash deficits with the US' trading partners, saying he would not cut any deals unless that was resolved.

"Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," Trump said on Sunday.

Politicians Mitch McConnell slams Trump's appointment of "amateur isolationists" at Pentagon

He told reporters aboard Air Force One that world leaders are "dying to make a deal."

Trump last week announced a baseline 10% import tariff on goods coming into the US, as well as much higher rates for many countries including allies the EU, Japan, and Taiwan.

Most countries have stopped short of retaliating but China announced on Friday retaliatory tariffs of 34% on all US goods from April 10.

Trillions of dollars have been wiped off stocks worldwide, and on Monday Asian equities took an even heavier hammering as investors moved to safer assets.

Futures contracts for the New York Stock Exchange's main boards were sharply down Sunday, suggesting more pain for battered Wall Street stocks when markets open Monday.

US oil dropped below $60 a barrel for the first time since April 2021 on worries of a global recession.

Donald Trump Trump posts video appearing to show deadly Yemen strike: "Oops"

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC's Meet the Press that 50 countries had reached out to negotiate, but as for whether they will be met with an open ear, he called it "a decision for President Trump."

"At this moment, he's created maximum leverage for himself... I think we're going to have to see what the countries offer, and whether it's believable," Bessent said.

Other countries have been "bad actors for a long time, and it's not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks," he claimed.

Peter Navarro, Trump's tariff guru, has pushed back against the mounting nervousness and insisted to investors that "you can't lose money unless you sell," promising "the biggest boom in the stock market we've ever seen."

Trump has baselessly insisted that countries around the world that sell products to the US are in fact ripping Americans off, and he sees tariffs as a means to right that wrong.

"Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!" Trump wrote on Truth social Sunday.