The White House unveiled a two-step tariff approach as Donald Trump’s long-awaited “Liberation Day” plans were finally released during a Rose Garden event at the White House.
The president will impose a baseline tariff rate of 10% on all countries with additional tariffs to be added on top for some of what the administration considers the worst offenders.
The president said those additional rates were calculated both based on tariffs but also non-tariff barriers that Trump has long bemoaned.
Trump held up a chart at the event with the additional rates he has planned and atop the list was China, which is set to receive a 34% tariff in a list that spanned dozens of countries. The European Union was second in the list and in line for 20% duties.
To the many clamoring for protection, Trump said “I say terminate your own tariffs and drop your barriers.”
Trump said the tariff calculations were actually only half of the cheating his team found, saying he could have gone higher. He called his approach “kind reciprocal.”
Trump released the details before the vice president, top cabinet officials, congressional leaders as well as workers he said will benefit from his policies.
The dramatic move, if it holds, could reorient the global trading system for decades and represents the climax of Trump’s decades-long focus on tariffs and unfair trading relationship that he says has led to America being ripped off.
“There will be complaints from the globalists,” Trump added Wednesday, claiming “every prediction our opponents have made for 30 years have been wrong.”
Wednesday’s announcement marks a middle ground of sorts between competing tariff approaches that the president had been weighing and have been debated within the administration in recent weeks.
President Donald Trump at the White House in February. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) · Win McNamee via Getty Images
One early plan had focused on levying differing duties for each country while another focused on a flat universal rate that Trump had pushed on the campaign trail.
“I think the president has two primary objectives,” Kelly Ann Shaw, partner at Hogan Lovells and Trump’s deputy assistant for international economic affairs in his first term, said in a Yahoo Finance Live appearance on Wednesday.
The first “is about leveling the playing field,” and the second objective is to lessen trade deficits while leaving trading partners “guessing.”
Wednesday’s highly anticipated unveiling comes at a delicate moment for the economy and markets, with stocks facing volatility for weeks on ever-changing tariff news and also few indications that this week’s announcement will quickly end the investor uncertainty.
Worldwide retaliation to Trump’s plan has already been promised with nations like China, Japan, and South Korea even making plans to team up and jointly respond to Trump’s move.
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Capitol Economics said in a note Wednesday that uncertainty may remain in the stock market even after today ”judging by the president’s mercurial approach to imposing tariffs.”
Wednesday’s tariff unveiling comes at a fraught moment for Trump politically following a weaker than expected GOP showing in special elections Tuesday and with the Senate set to vote later this evening on resolution to undo Trump’s Canada tariffs.
The wariness with tariffs is deep enough that at least a handful of Republicans are set to join Democrats in voting for the resolution and against the White House.
“They don’t like the tariffs either,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday afternoon.
Yet the administration appeared undaunted Wednesday with Trump appearing triumphant as his long awaited announcement finally commenced with the White House saying the president has secured about $5 trillion in new company investments since taking office and the White House pushing out a fact sheet about how “Tariffs Work.”
For Trump, as he put it Wednesday, it was “Promises made, promises kept.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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