Trump Announces ‘Fair and Reciprocal’ Tariff Plan
“No more, no less. In other words, they charge us a tax or tariff, and we charge them the exact same tax or tariff. Very simple.”
I mean, if they’re charging us tariffs, why not charge them? I say this as someone who hates tariffs!
President Donald Trump said:
And on trade, I have decided, for purposes of fairness, that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them. No more, no less. In other words, they charge us a tax or tariff, and we charge them the exact same tax or tariff. Very simple.
Nobody knows what that number is unless you go by the individual country. You can see what it is if you go to the individual country and you look at what they’re charging us. In almost all cases, they’re charging us vastly more than we charge them. But those days are over.
President @realDonaldTrump announces RECIPROCAL TARRIFFS!
pic.twitter.com/3gdw11RkC6
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) February 13, 2025
“We want a level playing field for all American workers… I’ve instructed my Secretary of State, my Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Treasury, and U.S. Trade Representative to do all necessary work to deliver reciprocity,” said Trump.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "We want a level playing field for all American workers… I've instructed my Secretary of State, my Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Treasury, and U.S. Trade Representative to do all necessary work to deliver reciprocity." pic.twitter.com/2Duj00yBZU
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 13, 2025
Here are a few examples:
- The U.S. tariff on ethanol is a mere 2.5%. Yet Brazil charges the U.S. ethanol exports a tariff of 18%. As a result, in 2024, the U.S. imported over $200 million in ethanol from Brazil while the U.S. exported only $52 million in ethanol to Brazil.
- The U.S. average applied Most Favored Nation (MFN) tariff on agricultural goods is 5%. But India’s average applied MFN tariff is 39%. India also charges a 100% tariff on U.S. motorcycles, while we only charge a 2.4% tariff on Indian motorcycles.
- The European Union can export all the shellfish it wants to America. But the EU bans shellfish exports from 48 of our states, despite committing in 2020 to expedite approvals for shellfish exports. As a result, in 2023, the U.S. imported $274 million in shellfish from the EU but exported only $38 million.
- The EU also imposes a 10% tariff on imported cars. Yet the U.S. only imposes a 2.5% tariff.
- A 2019 report found that across 132 countries and more than 600,000 product lines, United States exporters face higher tariffs more than two-thirds of the time.
Trump also hopes the moves bring businesses back to America:
REPORTER: Have you talked to any CEOs since the tariffs were announced for steel and aluminum? what’s the feedback from those?
TRUMP: They are in love with it. As you know, in Pennsylvania, U.S. Steel is through the roof. They’re all through the roof. That’s why I didn’t want U.S. Steel to make a deal with Japan or anybody else. I think it’s going to do great.
But I think maybe more than anybody else, steel companies and aluminum companies, they’re in love with what’s happened. And this will eventually be the car companies, chip companies. We have to have chips made in this country right now. Everything’s made in Taiwan, practically, almost all of it, a little bit in South Korea. But everything, almost all of it, is made in Taiwan, and we want it to be made..we want those companies to come to our country. In all due respect, they took the business away. Taiwan took our chip business away. We had these great companies that did so well, and it was taken from us, and we want that business back. We want it back in the United States. And if they don’t bring it back, we’re not going to be very happy.
REPORTER: …pharmaceuticals as well in China…that’s national security…
TRUMP: China and other places…We want to get the pharmaceuticals and drug businesses back into the United States.
President Trump: We want businesses to make their products in the USA — and that's what we're trying to do. pic.twitter.com/D7SEVtFFxp
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 13, 2025
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Comments
What “countries” like the EU need to understand is that the age of joementia is over. There is no more fucking about you either open up for equal trade or it’s game over.
IMO this is as long overdue as it is brilliant politically. Tough to attack this US tariff regime as unfair when every Nation has the ability to lower or eliminate tariffs by simply doing the same for US exports.
A level playing field?
Never heard of it….till now.
Uncle Sam isn’t going to be Uncle Sucker any more.
Reciprocity is fairness. Plain and simple.
Other countries should thank their stars that we are being fair. We don’t have to be. If we decided to act towards them the way they way they have generally acted toward us over the past 80 years they would be begging for mercy.
Of course, we understand that many countries are going to try cheating; they will have lower tariffs on a US good but will bump up local subsidies and lower local taxes for that same good. We need to have this taken into account when we assess what actually constitutes “reciprocity”.
Are we talking industrial ethanol, or table spirits?
This is exactly the policy I’ve always thought that we should have. So yes I very much applaud this. That doesn’t mean we can’t use tariffs as a bargaining chip in some instances when you have a, call it recalcitrant, party that doesn’t want to cooperate on something.
Read Adam Smith. Just because they’re harming their consumers in order to cater to a politically powerful special interest doesn’t mean we should do the same to our consumers, to cater to special interests here. It’s like saying we should have censorship because other countries do.
Access to the US economy is a privilege. Everyone is dying to sell into America. Businesses would PAY through the roof for access to our economy.
Your argument is based on the silly notion that doing business in the US economy is no different than doing business in the Congo.
If you knew anything about business then you would know how silly you sound.
Milhouse – You are absolutely correct – in the long term. However, what we really have in the current situation are “hang-overs” from the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War.
The United States was made rich by the fact that most industrialized countries were devastated by the war. Combine that with the fact that the Communist movement was in the ascendency – it wouldn’t have taken much for Italy to go completely Red along with Greece and others. Even the UK fell far to the Left with Labour and their Nationalizations.
Asia outside Japan (and perhaps even Japan as well) were ripe for the appeal of Communism. Freed from colonialism the governments of millions of poor people were adrift. There is a powerful appeal for the poor in Communism. Schools, hospitals, – all the basic services. China did go Communist – why not India, Cambodia, oh, and Vietnam?
Finally to the point: we (the U.S.) set up a trade system to best fit our goals of stopping or at least slowing the spread of Communism. We could afford it, let these ‘threatened’ countries sell their good to us cheaply to encourage their industry. With our strong domestic market we could permit them to tariff us without harming our industry.
We tried the same concept with NAFTA- if the Mexicans can get good jobs at home they wouldn’t come here.
However, we are now in the 21st Century . World War II is 80 years in the past, and the Communist expansionist threat died in the 90’s.
It’s time to re-examine the agreements made under different conditions so long ago.
A country that relies on structural imports is no longer a sovereign nation.
A country whose existence depends on structural imports is a vassal.
Further, intangible though it is, respect actually has value.
Oh look! ‘The moron’ changes his mind on tariffs AGai
N!
I mean – it’s amost if ‘ the moron’ has no grasp of the issue and just makes it up on the flat. Naaaaah- he’s a BUSINESSMAN. ( Snicker , smirk)
President Donald Trump outlined plans on Thursday to overhaul America’s entire system of tariffs in order to charge what he calls “reciprocal” taxes based on the country where goods are sourced.
If the White House’s preliminary assessment is accurate, it would be the largest tax increase on Americans since World War II—and one that Trump would apparently seek to implement without congressional approval.
https://reason.com/2025/02/13/trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-could-be-largest-tax-increase-since-world-war-ii/
redhat rube: ( finger in nose) ” duuuuh …tariff good…Trump says so”
Republican Sen. Rand Paul:
“Tariffs are simply taxes. Conservatives once united against new taxes. Taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices.”
“We won the last election by complaining about Democrats’ policies, which gave us high prices,” Tariff lovers will be forced to explain the persistence of high prices.”
That assumes no changes in behavior induced as a result the reciprocal tariffs. In a purely academic exercise in economics then sure imposing tariffs is not great. However that only views the issue through the one of the consumer. In the real world consumers are also taxpayers, Citizens and hopefully employees. Far easier to be a consumer if one has a good job ….such as the many domestic manufacturing jobs we used to have that have been sent overseas due to globalization in the name of faux free trade.
1. The foreign producers could absorb the tariff cost any lowering prices.
2. The foreign gov’t which impose tariffs and VAT on imported US goods can simply lower or eliminate the market distorting barriers they created on US goods.
Why might those two things occur?
1. The foreign producers want to retain their current market share. If the price of their export products become uncompetitive then consumers will find alternatives.
2. The foreign gov’t want to keep their domestic business afloat to provide jobs.
These reciprocal tariffs are designed to ultimately lower prices paid by US consumers. If these foreign gov’t and producers don’t act to lower prices then domestic US goods will be substituted. Domestic US companies will expand production or be created to meet the demand. Those US based companies will be creating additional jobs in the USA….and that means more money in the pockets of US workers to consume more goods produced in the USA.
Everyone concerned about free market purity should now address their concerns to the foreign gov’t who hold the power to eliminate any US tariff on their exported goods by eliminating the same tariffs those gov’t imposed on US goods they import.
It’s one thing to put tariffs on commodities like steel, aluminum and soybean. It’s quite something else to put tariffs on things we simply can’t make. Like what? Silicon processors. Taiwan didn’t ‘take’ our chips, as Trump stupidly claimed yesterday. Taiwan became better – MUCH better – at making them than we did. How much better? Today, Intel is leaning on TSMC to produce some of their most complicated SOCs…because Intel production capabilities won’t allow them to produce them with the same tolerances and production reliability. When Apple decided to make their own silicon, they had discussions with Intel about being their partner on the project. Those discussions went nowhere because Intel did not possess the technological/production wherewithal to make Apple Silicon, so Apple was forced to partner with TSMC. We can’t tariff Intel into excellence.
TSMC has begun expanding manufacturing capabilities in the US with a gigantic $15B investment in a fab in Arizona. Construction of that fab began in 2020 and parts of it are just coming online now. It won’t reach peak capacity until 2027, at the earliest. When it does, it will only be making (roughly) 7% of the chips the US needs every year.
Earlier this month, Nvidia released their latest series of GPUs, the Ada Lovelace cards, which are also manufactured by TSMC. Those cards, for a variety of reasons, are already ridiculously expensive with the flagship card being released with an MSRP of $1,999. Newegg and the other major retailers announced that they’re raising retail prices – not the scalper/market price, but the retail price – 10% because of the tariff. Young men – one of the core constituencies of the Trump coalition – are going to feel the adverse effects of tariffs very soon.
It’s likely most people simply don’t understand the reality of the semiconductor market right now. We have four large US semiconductor ‘manufacturers:,’ Intel, Qualcomm, Apple and Nvidia. Of those four, only Intel possesses any in-house manufacturing and even they don’t make all their own chips anymore, particularly the SOCs they’re beginning to introduce. The other three companies are essentially engineering firms that outsource the production of the chips they design. TSMC makes 80% of the Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia chips. Placing tariffs on products (that are already facing upward market pressures) that we can’t make is a big-time losing proposition.
Trump can be a bull in a China shop. Sometimes that’s beneficial as it potentiates his disruptive ability. But, other times it can be a liability and this liability most frequently manifests itself when he begins talking about things he just doesn’t understand, like the very esoteric world of semiconductors.
They can avoid the tariff by manufacturing in the USA. The Taiwanese producers can bring the production to the USA. The companies they supply chips to can put that into their purchase agreement. Heck could have done that long before now.
TSMC has…largely because Joe Biden gave away the farm with the CHIPS act.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-chips-semiconductor-manufacturing-6251ea5d44f00f7aca9673fd175c2684
I think the total cost of the plants they’re building is close to $70B with roughly a quarter of that cost being underwritten through tax breaks and grants by the federal and state government. But, guess who’s going to be working at that plant? Asians…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/business/tsmc-phoenix-taiwan.html
In any event, why would they want to move even more production to the US particularly if those enormous subsidies aren’t available? What’s in it for them? Absolutely nothing. They understand the market better than we do. It takes years to get these fabs operational (a half-decade or more) and unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to do it ourselves because Intel got fat, lazy and stupid. We can’t build these chips ourselves, at least not in the foreseeable future…and perhaps maybe never. But, we still need these chips particularly if we really are going to continue to lead the world in AI development. These are exactly the kinds of chips that are needed in AI workflows.
Sure we need the advanced chips for not just civilian but military applications so no major disagreement from me on those points….though if Taiwanese chip makers ownership want to remain Taiwanese v CHICOM bringing them behind the back of the building to redistribute the inside of their noggin with a small caliber pistol….perhaps their own self interest is best served by working with the USA and IN the USA. Especially considering we’d probably have to end up nuking the Taiwanese plants to prevent them and the trained workforce falling into CHICOM hands.
It isn’t as if we can’t do the manufacturing. It is a matter of investment in training and payroll costs to get workers the incentives to meet the disciplined work performance and conditions required. It ain’t a fast food job. There are several places in the USA where we could probably do it. Huntsville AL area as one example. Good educational system already in place to support the existing tech, aviation and space exploration production. Gonna have to put these facilities into places where the climb from prep to complete is from 8 to 10 not a 1 to 10 b/c some Congressman wants it in his CD.
Here’s a brilliant article by fellow principled free market advocate, Dominic Pino..
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dont-let-other-countries-set-u-s-tax-rates/
NOTE : If you own one of those ” I’m not very bright’ red hats, don’t bother reading-it’s over your head.
“Reciprocal tariffs” are framed to sound like a simple matter of fairness. But there’s nothing fair about letting other countries make U.S. tax policy, and that’s what the Trump administration’s proposal amounts to.
“Reciprocal tariffs” are framed to sound like a simple matter of fairness. But there’s nothing fair about letting other countries make U.S. tax policy, and that’s what the Trump administration’s proposal amounts to.
So the guys who want the government to be more “efficient” are now saying they want bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., to study every single product on the market and all the government policies related to it so they can set a tax rate to make it “fair.”
How much work would that involve, if they were really going to do that? Trade economist Douglas Irwin has the numbers in the Wall Street Journal: There are about 13,000 line items in the U.S. tariff schedule and about 200 countries in the world, so that would mean about 2.6 million tariff rates. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative employs about 200 people total, so if they divided the work evenly, each of them would be responsible for setting 13,000 tariff rates. Is the administration of DOGE about to go on a hiring spree for bureaucrats so it can raise taxes?
There’s the newfangled things called computers. They have oldie but goodie things like tabulation from spreadsheets. Input the data and it spits out the rate.
That’s how major retailers calculate the various State and local Sales tax rates for the 50 US States, about 3500 Counties and tens of thousands of municipalities all with different retail and wholesale sales tax rates.
Faux free traders make these sorts of ‘oh, it is too difficult to calculate’ arguments but never seem to have applied the same vigor to the imposition of the many different thousands of tax entities on retail taxes. Then there’s the property taxes for property owners with additional complexity from retail sales taxes; gotta add the many differs tax entities, K-12 schools, Community/JR College, fire district,.water/sewer. FWIW in El Paso TX I had something like 16 different tax entities grabbing property taxes.