Trump claims U.S. industry ‘reborn’ as he imposes sweeping tariffs on his highly touted ‘Liberation Day’
The Trump administration will levy an across-the-board tax on all imported goods purchased by Americans and levy additional taxes on imports from countries which officials deem to be placing unfair barriers on the importation or sale of American goods in an effort to forcibly undo decades of globalization and reindustrialize a U.S. economy that has become increasingly dominated by services and knowledge-based work in recent years.
Speaking at an event in the White House Rose Garden to mark what he has called “liberation day” for weeks now, Trump said Wednesday would “forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.”
After a series of whipsaw days in the market ever since Trump began his saber rattling about tariffs on Mexico, Canada and just about any other country, making the announcement after markets closed made sense to prevent a large market sell-off or a decline in stocks.
He said Americans would, starting in just a few days, pay 34 percent taxes on all Chinese imports, 20 percent on all imports from European Union countries, 32 percent on imports from Vietnam, 24 percent on imports from Japan, using what White House officials described as a formula that bases the tax rates on America’s trade deficits.
At minimum, American will pay what Trump called a 10 percent “baseline tariff” on all imports “to help rebuild our economy and to prevent cheating.”
He also claimed that “foreign nations” would “finally be asked to pay for the privilege of access to our market, the biggest market in the world,” even though foreign countries do not pay tariffs because tariffs are taxes paid by Americans.
Trump, a billionaire whose administration is staffed with some of the wealthiest people in the United States, said Americans would “have to go through a little tough love” as a result of his policies.
The president painted a morose and depressing picture of America’s world-leading economic position as having been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike” for “decades” and said he was signing an executive order that amounts to “our declaration of economic independence” that would “make America great again, greater than ever before” by taxing Americans without a single vote cast in Congress.
He claimed the “reciprocal tariffs” — import taxes paid by American importers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices — will let his administration “use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”
“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base. We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers, and ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers. This will be, indeed, the golden age of America. It’s coming back. We’re going to come back very strongly,” he said.
Trump then accused some of America’s closest allies of having taken advantage of American generosity by having their own domestic industries while not adopting policies to encourage consumers to purchase American products, particularly with automobiles.
He said his administration will impose a 25 percent import tax on any foreign-made automobiles starting at midnight on Thursday while castigating South Korea and Japan for not buying enough American cars.
“In many cases, the friend is worse than the foe in terms of trade, but such horrendous imbalances have devastated our industrial base and put our national security at risk,” he said.
The president accused American allies of having “ripped off” the United States and harmed American workers, who he said have “watched in anguish” as “foreign leaders … stole” American jobs.
