US: Trump Set to Announce New Round of Tariffs on Liberation Day
By Staff, Agencies
US President Donald Trump will announce his latest round of tariffs at the White House on Wednesday, threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has dubbed “liberation day”.
Trump has rattled global stock markets, alarmed corporate executives and economists, and triggered heated rows with the US’s largest trading partners by announcing and delaying plans to impose tariffs on foreign imports several times since taking office.
No details of Wednesday’s plans have been made available ahead of the announcement. The president is set to speak at 4pm ET. White House officials said that the implementation of the most sweeping rewrite of US trade policy would be immediate.
Trump has made clear a few goals he wants to accomplish through his tariffs: bring manufacturing back to the US, respond to unfair trade policies from other countries, increase tax revenue and incentivize crackdowns on migration and drug trafficking.
The implementation of his tariffs has so far been haphazard, with multiple rollbacks and delays and vague promises that have yet to come to fruition. The threats have soured US relations with its largest trading partners. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called them “unjustified” and pledged to retaliate. The European Union has said it has a “strong plan” to retaliate.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said that Trump was spending Tuesday “perfecting” the trade plan. “He is with his trade and tariff team right now, perfecting it to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker,” Leavitt said.
Ahead of the announcement, Trump repeated the idea of imposing so-called reciprocal tariffs, where the US would tax imports at the same rates that a country uses for US exports. Trump has specifically mentioned countries like South Korea, Brazil and India, along with the EU, as being possible targets for reciprocal tariffs.
“The world has been ripping off the United States for the last 40 years and more,” Trump told NBC over the weekend. “All we’re doing is being fair.”
Also, still on the table are 25% tariffs on all imports from Mexico and Canada, two of the US’s biggest trading partners, which Trump wants to utilize to force the countries to quell migration and drug trafficking into the US. In early March, Trump delayed the start of the tariffs for the second time after negotiating with leaders of the two countries.
Reports have also said that Trump’s advisers are also pitching him a 20% across-the-board tariff on all imports, something closer to what Trump promised on the campaign trail.
Any tariffs announced would be on top of the tariffs that Trump has already implemented: an additional 20% tariff on all Chinese imports and a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports. There is also a 10% tariff on energy imports from Canada.
Trump also announced in March a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles and, eventually, imported auto parts, which will start going into effect on Thursday.
The tariff plans have led to stock market sell-offs and are proving unpopular with Americans, according to polls. Multiple reports suggest internal conflict within the White House over how far and wide the tariffs should go have exacerbated the uncertainty over what the tariffs will be.
