President Donald Trump believes by implementing reciprocal tariffs beginning on April 2, he will bring the “liberation of America.”
“We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world — friend and foe,” Trump told Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle in an interview that aired on Wednesday. “On April 2, I call it the liberation of America. We’ve been the fat, dumb, foolish country that allowed everyone to rip us off.”
The Trump administration is considering five policies in determining how to enact reciprocal tariffs: nontariff barriers, currency manipulation, unfair funding and labor suppression, and value added taxes.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that if countries fail to change their policies, the Trump administration “will put up the tariff wall to protect our economy, protect our workers, and protect our industries.”
“For years we’ve allowed our country to be raped and pillaged,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday, arguing the United States has been unfairly treated in economic relations with other countries, even allies.
Details regarding Trump’s reciprocal tariff plan are still being worked on.
“Many plans have been discussed, and when the president is ready to announce a plan, the American people will hear from him directly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week.
Trump’s comments to Ingraham echo claims he and his administration have made in recent weeks about other countries taking advantage of the U.S., and the administration plans to go beyond existing tariffs in deciding on reciprocal rates.
Economists don’t necessarily consider value-added taxes to be trade barriers. Rather, when a value-added tax border adjustment is applied to U.S. goods sold in a foreign country, those goods become more expensive, which reduces demand for those goods. By lessening the demand for those goods, it weakens the U.S. dollar, but at the same time, a weaker dollar makes U.S. goods cheaper and more attractive to foreign buyers.
Economists have raised concerns that Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will tank foreign tourism in the U.S. and lead to a decline in American travel.
Trump posted on social media on Wednesday night that the Federal Reserve should cut rates as tariffs begin in April, further repeating his “liberation of America” belief about them.
