Donald Trump announced major new tariffs with ‘immediate’ effect across the globe and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned other countries against retaliation.
Yesterday (April 2) marked Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ of the US, with the 47th President unveiling the roll out of tariffs on foreign-made automobiles across the world alongside a baseline tariff on basically all goods coming into the country.
As of midnight last night, a 25 percent tariff has been slapped on all foreign-made automobiles. Trump has slammed countries such as Thailand for charging ‘higher prices like 60 percent,’ India charging ’70 percent,’ Vietnam ’75 percent’, and ‘others even higher than that’ when the US used to only charge 2.5 percent.
As for other goods, Trump revealed a baseline 10 percent tariff which will be applied to all countries as of Saturday (April 9) at 12.01am ET – except those compliant with the USMCA free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States.
Non-compliant countries will be charged at a 25 percent rate, while UK imports have a 10 percent tariff and EU goods will have a 20 percent tariff.
And should countries even think about counter tariffs? Well, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned against them ‘doing anything rash’.
Bessent uttered a six-word warning to America’s trading partners, telling CNN: “Doing anything rash would be unwise.”
He continued: “Sit back, take a deep breath, don’t immediately retaliate. Let’s see where this goes, because if you retaliate, that’s how we get escalation.”
Trump slammed ‘both friend and foe alike’ of having ‘looted, pillaged, raped and plundered’ the US.
He said American steelworkers, autoworkers, farmers and skilled craftsmen are among the workers who’ve been ‘ripped off for more than 50 years’ and the country once had an ‘American dream that you don’t hear so much about’.
Ultimately he resolved: “They do it so us, and we do it to them. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.”
Trump has announced widespread tariffs across the globe (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump accused the ‘friend’ as being ‘worse than the foe’ when it comes to trade in the US before unveiling the new tariffs, stating them as being the US’ ‘declaration of economic independence’.
Trump said: “This is Liberation Day. We’ve been waiting for a long time, April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to ‘Make America Wealthy Again.'”
