1 day Ago By Ari Yanover
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is taking a blowtorch to the rules that have governed world trade for decades. The “reciprocal” tariffs that he is expected to announce Wednesday are likely to create chaos for global businesses and conflict with America’s allies and adversaries alike. Since the 1960s, tariffs — or import taxes — have emerged from negotiations between dozens of countries.
Trump wants to seize the process. “Obviously, it disrupts the way that things have been done for a very long time,” said Richard Mojica, a trade attorney at Miller & Chevalier. “Trump is throwing that out the window .
.. Clearly this is ripping up trade.
There are going to have to be adjustments all over the place.” Pointing to America’s massive and persistent trade deficits _ not since 1975 has the U.S.
sold the rest of the world more than it’s bought — Trump charges that the playing field is tilted against U.S. companies.
A big reason for that, he and his advisers say, is because other countries usually tax American exports at a higher rate than America taxes theirs. Trump has a fix: He’s raising U.S.
tariffs to match what other countries charge. And he’s expected to roll out his reciprocal tariffs _ possibly along with unknown details about other import taxes — on Wednesday April 2. He’s taken to calling the date “Liberation Day” because his protectionist policies aim to free the U.
S. economy from dependence on foreign goods. The president is an unabashed tariff supporter.
He used them liberally in his first term and is deploying them even more aggressively in his second. Since returning to the White House, he has slapped 20% tariffs on China, unveiled a 25% tax on imported cars and trucks set to take effect Thursday, effectively raised U.S.
taxes on foreign steel and aluminum and imposed levies on some goods from Canada and Mexico, which he may expand this week. Economists don’t share Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs. They’re a tax on importers that usually get passed on to consumers.
But it’s possible that Trump’s reciprocal tariff threat could bring other countries to the table and get them to lower their own import taxes. “It could be win-win,” said Christine McDaniel, a former U.S.
trade official now at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “It’s in other countries’ interests to reduce those tariffs.”.
