By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2025-04-02 21:01:18 | Updated at 2025-04-03 18:55:51
21 hours ago
WASHINGTON — President Trump declared a national emergency Wednesday to impose his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs on all imports — with a new 10% baseline rate and harsher levies on dozens of other countries including key allies including European Union members, Japan and Israel.
Trump called the move a “Declaration of Economic Independence” and waited until stock trading ended at 4 p.m. to announce the details.
“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It’s our Declaration of Economic Independence,” Trump said in the Rose Garden.
“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,” Trump said.
“Ultimately more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers. This will be indeed be the golden age of America.”
The new 10% baseline rate is a roughly triple the average US tariff rate before Trump reclaimed power and will take effect Saturday.
Specific reciprocal duties will take effect April 9 — including a 20% rate on the European Union, 24% on Japan and 17% on Israel.
Trump railed against various foreign tariffs and non-tariff barriers, citing Australian restrictions on US beef imports, EU bans on poultry, Japanese fees on rice imports and South Korean car-sale policies.
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been,” Trump said.
“In 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with a Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy,”
He added: “If imposing tariffs and protective barriers made nations poor then every country on Earth would be racing to eliminate these policies.”
“To all of the foreign presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, ambassadors and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these tariffs, I say, ‘terminate your own tariffs, drop your barriers’,” Trump went on.
“April 2, 2025 will 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.”
“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. American steel workers, auto workers, farmers and skilled craftsmen, we have a lot of them here with us today. They really suffered gravely.”
The president, who hosted various tradesmen including United Auto Workers members in the audience alongside member of his cabinet, said the sweeping tariffs should come as no surprise because “I’ve been talking about it for 40 years.”
“If you look at my old speeches, where I was young and very handsome… I’d be on a television show, I’d be talking about how we were being ripped off by these countries. I mean, nothing changes very much,” Trump said.
“It’s such an honor to be finally able to do this.”
The announcement is expected to roil the business world and critics argue the new rates will drive up American consumer costs, fueling inflation after costs already soared 22% during Joe Biden’s four years in office.
Trump points to low inflation during his first term, when he imposed more targeted tariffs on foreign products, as evidence that costs may not surge as he adopts protectionist trade policies.
He used his address to reiterate his call for congressional Republicans to approve his plans to eliminate federal taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits, and to allow tax writeoff for domestic car loan interest payments.
The baseline 10% tariff was adopted to prevent circumvention of harsher rates among the “worst offenders,” White House officials said.
The officials cited as an example China, which faces an average current US tariff of 42.1%, allegedly using facilities in Cambodia and Vietnam to repackage products for export to America.
Israel, with which the US last year had a $7.4 billion trade deficit, was slapped with the steep tariff regardless of being a major recipient of US military aid.
“Israel steals a lot of intellectual property from, for example, the pharmaceutical manufacturers in this country,” a Trump White House official said.
An analysis by the Tax Foundation last year found that a blanket 10% tariff would increase federal revenues by an average of about $200 billion over the next decade — or roughly one-tenth of the current federal deficit.
That analysis cautioned that “[i]f foreign countries retaliate, even partially, to the US-imposed tariffs, revenue will fall further as the economy shrinks even more.”
The specific “reciprocal” tariff rate imposed on select countries was calculated by assessing the current bilateral trade imbalance, then reducing it by half because “the president is lenient and he wants to be kind to the world,” a Trump aide told reporters.
“The numbers [for tariffs by country] have been calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers…. based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all trade practices, the sum of all cheating,” a White House official said, calling it “the most fair thing in the world.”
“We’re not charging them the full amount —each of the reciprocal tariffs will be half of the actual calculation.”
The tariffs announcement coincided with the Wednesday adoption of 25% tariffs on most Canadian and Mexican goods, as well as a 25% tariff on all foreign-made cars and auto parts, which administration officials say will impact 75% of all cars sold in the US, creating a heavy incentive to onshore production.
Last month Trump slapped an additional 25% tariff on China over fentanyl smuggling and in February he imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, without exceptions for major importers like Brazil and South Korea that previously were in effect.
Trump has teased plans for tariffs on computer chips, copper, lumber, pharmaceuticals and other products.
