WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has brought the country to the brink of a global trade war and on Wednesday, when he unveils a massive tariff regime, he will begin to see whether his gamble pays off.
The Republican president and his advisers are defying even most conservative economists to implement tariffs that are expected to hit every major country, and U.S. consumers, with as-yet-unspecified taxes on imported goods. The retro approach has been years in the making, with Trump refusing to back down in the face of a tumbling stock market and public recriminations from the United States’ top allies.
But Trump says that for companies and countries that want to get out from under the tariffs there is a way out: Build their products in America or lower their trade barriers.
While the Biden administration was committed to working with U.S. allies to stand united against rival powers such as China and Russia, Trump has cut a wildly different path and approached the matter as the U.S. against everyone else.
Trump advisers and allies say the businessman has a clear goal: bringing companies and jobs to the United States and forcing countries to lower their tariffs or offer the U.S. something else he considers of significant value.
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a close Trump ally, said the president “genuinely believes” that the U.S. has been “taken advantage of” on trade for decades and the country’s protectionist policies from a century ago were better for the economy.
“Trump likes to negotiate. And he figured out sometime, I think probably during the four years in the wilderness, that we’re the largest economy in the world, we have the greatest net advantage, and therefore in negotiations we will virtually always win,” Gingrich said.
The president’s expected tariffs on a broad array of foreign goods have injected a wild card into a shaky U.S. economy and caused consumer confidence to plummet.
Now, with a fresh round of tariffs coming, economists, critics and even some White House allies and advisers are questioning Trump’s tactics and the administration’s tumultuous rollout, which has come in fits and starts.
First, it was Canada, Mexico and China. Then it was steel and aluminum. Last week it was foreign automakers and countries that import Venezuelan oil.
The tariffs on close trading partners Mexico and Canada were paused and later modified, with the expectation that additional duties would land on April 2. The uncertainty has been jarring for businesses and consumers.
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on March 31, 2025.
Trump’s latest round of tariffs is being billed as his biggest, boldest attempt yet at reordering global trade. He has proposed reciprocal tariffs on every nation the U.S. has a trade deficit with and promised to retaliate on what he is referring to as “Liberation Day.” The president will officially unveil his tariffs, which a White House official said Trump and his advisers were still debating this week, at a 4 p.m. ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.
“LIBERATION DAY IN AMERICA IS COMING, SOON,” Trump wrote on social media last week. “FOR YEARS WE HAVE BEEN RIPPED OFF BY VIRTUALLY EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, BOTH FRIEND AND FOE. BUT THOSE DAYS ARE OVER — AMERICA FIRST!!!
The exact amount of the tariffs, and which countries they’ll apply to, has been shrouded in mystery, and the president has at times dialed down his rhetoric about how aggressive they’ll be.
“We’re going to be much nicer than they were to us,” Trump said Sunday evening, speaking aboard Air Force One.
Art of the trade deal
Trump enacted tariffs on steel and aluminum for most countries during his first administration and used them as a cudgel against Mexico and Canada to negotiate an update to the North American Free Trade Agreement that was more favorable to the United States.
He campaigned aggressively on an even more ambitious tariff policy in his second term, promising a hike of up to 60% on goods from China, which he also targeted during his first go in office.
How serious Trump is about moving forward with an aggressive slate of tariffs has been an open question since he took office earlier this year.
Allies often have framed his approach as a negotiating tactic, and Trump has backed off several countries to some degree after they offered him varying concessions.
Trump’s own advisers have described his approach to foreign dealings as transactional, with the president using his career as a property developer and businessman with dealmaking experience as a selling point for his presidency.
“Certainly the president is always up to take a phone call, always up for a good negotiation,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. “But he is very much focused on fixing the wrongs of the past.”
Over the weekend, the president said it would take countries lowering their tariffs or offering him something of significant value to change his course.
Vietnam attempted to do just that, lowering its taxes on U.S. imports of automobiles, liquefied natural gas and ethanol. It also approved the use of Trump pal and special government employee Elon Musk’s satellite internet service provider Starlink.
The U.S. has one of its largest trade deficits with Vietnam, and the country is a prime target for Trump’s tariffs, which could hit its clothing and apparel industries.
A White House official pointed to the Vietnam example of Trump’s strategy having the intended effect.
In 2024 the top U.S. trade deficits were with China at $295.4 billion, the European Union at $235.6 billion, Mexico at $171.8 billion and Vietnam at $123.5 billion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Lower down on the list were Canada at $63.3 billion and India at $45.7 billion.
Trump targeted Canada and Mexico with 25% levies in late January. But he paused the tariffs days later after both countries agreed to do more to restrict unauthorized immigration and combat fentanyl. He later gave a temporary exemption to automobiles and goods covered under the free trade agreement between the three countries that was negotiated during his first administration.
The tariffs are unpopular with most Americans, with 56% in opposition of the tariffs on Mexican products and 61% opposition to tariffs on goods from Canada in a Fox News survey released in late March. The tariffs on China had mild approval of 55% percent of respondents. Roughly seven in 10 Americans think the country is headed toward a recession, according to the survey.
The Trump administration has brushed off concerns that the tariffs will be inflationary, but has so far failed to convince the public.
Most Americans – 69% – said they believe they will increase prices in the Fox News poll. A negative sentiment around the economy, which began during COVID and dogged former President Joe Biden, has followed Trump into the early months of his administration.
March was the worst month since December 2022 for the S&P 500. The benchmark index closed slightly higher on Tuesday as investors waited to see what Trump would announce.
Democrats are pointing to the stock market and public opinion in raising concerns about Trump’s tariff policy. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is leading an effort in Congress to challenge Trump’s tariff on Canadian goods.
“Despite these tariffs’ unpopularity and their toxic impact on our economy, Trump is finding any excuse he can to impose them,” Kaine wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed about the tariff on Canadian goods.
Even the president’s conservative allies have questioned how Trump’s tariffs have been executed.
Stephen Moore, a senior economic adviser for Trump’s campaign, said the rollout of Trump’s tariff policies has been “scattershot” and “counterproductive.”
“Tariffs are on, they’re off… We don’t know what the rate was going to be. I think that’s a little bit unsettling for financial markets,” said Moore, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
But Moore supports reciprocal tariffs and said he believes the president ultimately will succeed in using them to lower tariffs that other countries levy on American products.
“I think Trump is a master negotiator,” Moore said. “I’ve been around him a lot, and I wouldn’t bet against him to win.”
Moore said other countries are too dependent on U.S. markets to grow their economies to engage in a “tit for tat trade war.” He predicted they will capitulate “and it will open up more markets for American farmers and American manufacturers.”
Gingrich described the rollout of the president’s tariffs, which has been criticized as confusing and indecisive, as “classically Trump.”
“Energetic, aggressive, mildly confusing, strategically brilliant, but not always tactically quite as brilliant as the strategy,” Gingrich said.
Trump last month defended changes in the tariff schedule, including a previous delay in tariffs on some goods from Mexico and Canada that was meant to help American automakers.
“I didn’t change my mind,” he said. “I don’t change. But the word flexibility is an important word. Sometimes there’s flexibility. So, there will be flexibility.”
At another point last week, Trump seemed to suggest the tariffs might not be as severe as he’d indicated during his first weeks in office.
“We’re going to make it very lenient,” Trump said. “I think people are going to be very surprised. It’ll be, in many cases, less than the tariff that they’ve been charging us for decades.”
Victoria Coates, who served as deputy national security adviser in Trump’s first administration, said the president’s willingness to alter his tariff plans once announced helps get results.
“He’s showing this is not just a blunt hammer,” Coates said. “He’s not just going to do it. He understands that there are issues. He said repeatedly, ‘I don’t want to hurt people. they just need to stop hurting us.’ So I think you’re seeing them modify and adjust, but they are also getting results.”
‘There’s no strategy here’
Trump critics say the president doesn’t have a plan and is subjecting the finances of everyday Americans to his whims and ego by unleashing unnecessary economic chaos.
“There’s no strategy here… zero,” said Michael Cohen, a longtime Trump confidante turned critic who testified against him in his Manhattan hush money trial. “This isn’t about strategy, this about brute force… and dictating demands.”
Cohen said Trump always wants “to project strength.” Tariffs allow him to do that on a grand, global scale.
“He’s got a false understanding of what the projection of strength is even about,” Cohen said.
Economists say the president is overselling what the tariffs can achieve and could drive up inflation and lead to a recession.
“I think it’s a policy with wrongheaded goals being pursued in an incompetent manner, the result of which will hurt the economic outcomes of workers and households,” said Michael Strain, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.
Strain said he believes tariffs are unlikely to revitalize domestic manufacturing – one of Trump’s stated goals.
Some of Trump’s goals also appear to be in conflict. Trump has talked about raising revenue with tariffs and protecting American manufacturing. But if he is using tariffs as a negotiating tactic and doesn’t fully implement them, he will not raise revenues nor have barriers in place to protect American industries, experts say.
Ultimately, Strain said he does not think Trump has a coherent strategy.
“People are trying to figure out what game of five dimensional chess the president is playing and I don’t think there is one,” he said. “I don’t think he knows what he’s doing and he’s making mistakes and making this up as he goes along.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s new ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs: Smart negotiating or chaos?
