Trump tariffs: ‘Cheats’ will no longer prosper at America’s expense

Donald Trump has upended the global trading system, warning America’s friends were often worse than its enemies when it came to reciprocal trade | SEE CHART OF NATIONS HIT

Donald Trump holds a signed executive order after announcing reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden. Picture: AFP.

Donald Trump has declared that America’s friends were often worse than its enemies when it came to reciprocal trade, as he justified his new wave of tariffs on Thursday.

Speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday local time, the US President declared “we are not taking it anymore” and that April 2 would be remembered as the day America reclaimed its destiny and US industry was reborn.

He confirmed the reciprocal tariffs would commence from Friday local time, saying America would “calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating”.

The official start date for the new regime, as confirmed by the White House, is 12.01am (local time) April 5, 2025. A White House statement said the tariffs would remain in place “until such a time as President Trump determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying non-reciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved or mitigated”.

Mr Trump will be able to “increase the tariff if trading partners retaliate or decrease the tariffs if trading partners take significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade agreements and align with the United States on economic and national security matters”.

The President said America was being “very kind” because he would charge other nations “approximately half of what they are and have been charging us”.

He said imposing a full reciprocal tariff would have been “tough for a lot of countries”.

Mr Trump warned that, for decades, America had been “looted, pillaged and raped”, and that other nations had become rich and powerful at its expense.

“Now it’s our turn to prosper,” he said.

Mr Trump said the revenue raised as a result of the new tariffs would go towards reducing taxes and paying down the national debt.

He argued that jobs and factories would come “roaring back” into America, and that his policies would supercharge the US industrial base. He also took aim at the “vicious attacks” American workers had suffered as a result of foreign trade barriers.

“We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers, and ultimately more production at home will mean stronger competition at lower prices for consumers,” he said.

Mr Trump revealed that his administration would establish a new “minimum baseline tariff of 10 per cent” that would apply to other countries “to help rebuild our economy and to prevent cheating”.

“Foreign nations will finally be asked to pay for the privilege of access to our market, the biggest market in the world,” he said.

The White House confirmed that Mr Trump was “invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977” to address a “national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit”.

It warned that the trade deficit was driven by the “absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships and other harmful policies like currency manipulation and exorbitant value-added taxes perpetuated by other countries”.

The 50 per cent discounted reciprocal tariff rate being imposed by the US means Beijing will be one of the biggest losers from Mr Trump’s trade shake-up.

China will face a reciprocal tariff of 34 per cent. But many other nations in Asia will also face much higher US tariffs and be even harder hit, with Vietnam looking at a 46 per cent tariff.

Europe has not escaped. The EU will be hit with a 20 per cent reciprocal tariff and, like Australia, the UK will face a reciprocal 10 per cent tariff rate.

Mr Trump said that “with today’s actions” he was standing up for American farmers who had been “brutalised by nations all over the world”. He took aim at Canada for imposing a 250-300 per cent tariff on many of America’s dairy products.

“With countries like Canada, we subsidise a lot of countries and keep them going and keep them in business,” he said. “In the case of Mexico, it’s $300bn a year. In the case of Canada, it’s close to $200bn a year. And they say, why are we doing this?

“I mean, at what point do you say, ‘You got to work for yourselves’? This is why we have the big deficits. This is why we have the amount of debt that’s been placed on our heads over the last number of years. And we’re really not taking it anymore.”

Mr Trump said America had a strong history of using tariffs, arguing that they had helped to generate US power and wealth.

“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. And the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been,” Mr Trump said. “So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.

“We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it.”