President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced “reciprocal tariffs” on all imports, holding up a chart at his announcement that showed a wide 10 to 50% range in the taxes on countries that include China, India, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, as well as the European Union.
“We will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us,” Trump said in a “Make America Wealthy Again” ceremony at the White House’s Rose Garden. “The tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that, yes, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries who didn’t want to do that.”
The chart lays out the tariffs and other trade costs that those countries, according to Trump, have placed on U.S. imports. The U.S. will now charge a tariff on each country that is equal to half of the number that America calculated, in addition to existing tariffs.
“China, 67%. That’s tariffs charged to the USA, including currency manipulation and trade barriers,” Trump said as he read the rate he claimed China charged the U.S., which will result in an additional 34% tariff on China.
It is not clear what formula the U.S. is using to determine the rates.
A host of tariffs are slated to take effect Wednesday and Thursday, adding taxes on a range of products that include cars and all products from the European Union. Trump has also threatened a 200% tariff on wine and alcoholic products from the European Union, a 25% tariff on all pharmaceuticals, and a tariff on all products from nations that import Iranian or Russian oil. But he has not specified when, if ever, those would take effect.
Trump has gone back and forth on tariffs — announcing some, delaying some, narrowing some — but the incoming levies mark an escalation in Trump’s global trade war. It is an attempt by Trump to change the global economic order, and punish countries that he argues do not buy enough American products and have a trade deficit with the U.S.
Some nations, like Canada and China, have already responded by implementing tariffs on some U.S. goods, and more are likely to come. That means the prices that Americans pay for goods and services will rise as companies pass the price increases onto consumers. The Trump administration continues to maintain, against the history of tariffs, that the levies will result in billions of dollars of economic growth for the U.S. after some short-term pain.
