Here's How the World Is Reacting to Trump's Tariff Announcement

townhall.com ^ | April 03, 2025 | Jeff Charles

[V_TWIN]

During his announcement, the president argued that other countries have maintained hefty tariffs on American goods while expecting the U.S. to keep lower duties on imports. He stated that he would impose “reciprocal tariffs” on other countries, explaining, “They do it to us, we do it to them.”

The governments of the affected nations aren’t happy about the development, as can be expected. Several have already cried foul, speaking out against the new tariffs. China vowed to use retaliatory measures against the U.S.

Europe has also signaled that it would employ countermeasures against Trump’s tariffs. The European Union called Trump’s action a “major blow to the world economy,” CNN reported. Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the EU’s executive arm,” said on Thursday that she “deeply regret[s] this choice.”

[V_TWIN]

So IOW tariffs are only fair when the world uses them against the US.

Fair is now unfair.

F Europe

[joesbucks]

Winning.

[Cold Heart]

There is a BEE article telling how the democrats are reacting:)

[Delta 21]

Tariffs are working,

and we are still winning. Sorry Canada. You wont be having any U.S. dairy in your diet next year.

[crz]

We dont need them, but they need us.

And they know it.

Spend here and travel/vacation here.

Eff them.

Think about what we miss not travelling in our own country.
I could have anyone spending a month in AZ or U.P. of Mi zig zagging back and forth visiting and site seeing and they would never see half.

[Gen.Blather]

Europe has an interesting problem. Value added (VAT) taxes. Every stop of the process, mining, refining, transportation, assembly, packaging, transportation again, are taxed. American products don’t have those taxes. To make the products equivalent they’d have to do away with their entire taxation scheme. The quick and easy way was to put a tariff on American goods to level out the prices. If there’s no tariff on American goods, then Europe will not sell a single item they make if there’s an American product of the same type.

This is a panty-wetting moment for them. (I just ordered UberEATS popcorn.)

[rlmorel]

Tariffs don't work. So they say.

---

You might (or might not) appreciate this viewpoint on the "new" form of political action MAGA has introduced when Trump took office.

LINK: Bill Whittle: Five Hole Diplomacy

This is a 15 min video (The Right Angle Series) on Bill Whittle's website where each episode (up to two or three a week if things allow) involves each participant (Bill Whittle, Scott Ott, and Stephen Green) the opportunity to choose the subject of discussion, and it is a free-flowing discussion of the issue that I have found both highly entertaining and informative.

In this episode, they discuss Colombia's refusal to accept flights of illegal immigrants, and Trump's unique style of "diplomacy" which Bill Whittle has deliciously coined as "Five Hole Diplomacy".

To contrast this to the traditional government diplomatic response to issues, Stephen Green had featured a post on X by someone titled Cynical Publius which Bill Whittle chose as they lynchpin of his comparison to "traditional" State Department processes to Trump's "Five Hole Diplomacy": To fully understand just how remarkable that exchange back at the end of January was with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump.

I’ll illustrate.

1. Traditional Approach:
   • Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
     
     
   • On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
     
     
   • The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
     
     
   • The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
     
     
   • The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper.
     
     
   • The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
     
     
   • SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
     
     
   • The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
     
     
   • Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is. T
     
     
   • he White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
     
     
   • Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.

2. Trump Approach:
   • Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
     
     
   • After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
     
     
   • By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
     
     
   • Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.

Winning.

See the difference? It’s called LEADERSHIP. It is briliiantly done, IMO. I hope those of you who take the time to watch the entertaining and informative video enjoy the delivery as much as I did.

I posted this for a reason.

Doing things as they have always been done does not slow our country down from the cliff it has been approaching for nearly nine decades. We have been rushing headlong towards insolvency and ruin. And being $37 Trillion in debt, with a Trillion dollars being added every 100 days and paying nearly $600 Billion each year on servicing the debt ALONE means we don't have any time. It may be too late to save our country. But if we are going to try, we have to do it differently than we have, or we will get the same result, and our country is going to disintegrate.

We need to embrace the process wielding the chainsaw to cut the encrusted barnacles from the hull of our ship and discard the way we have been approaching it for more than 90 years because it doesn't work.

[rdcbn1]

Unfortunately, we are at the end state of a massive world wide credit expansion and America is rapidly losing it's ability to be the purchaser of last resort to support the world predatory export economies.

As a consequence, the world economic trade system is becoming more and more of a zero sum game.

At some point in the future , there is going to be a restructuring of the worlds trade system to reflect the current realities.

Trump is working to get ahead of this restructuring lead the way to reshape the US economy to survive and maybe even thrive going forward.

[FlingWingFlyer]

What Trump needs to do to the RATs and their global butt pals is say, IT IS ILLEGAL FOR ANY COUNTRY TO HAVE TARIFFS AGAINST ANOTHER. LET’S ALL GOT TARIFF FREE!!!

[Candor7]

Here's How the World Is Reacting to Trump's Tariff Announcement>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

La Traduction ( Translation):

“This is How the World Economic Forum under Globalist Klaus Schwab is reacting to Trumps tariff Announcement.

The Froggies, the Teutonics, The Brits , The Poles, The Dutch, The Italians, the ordinary people of these nations want cheaper prices for their products.

The PEOPLE would have a vastly lowered set of consumer prices if US competition with Euro products was allowed.

But no, no, they want to keep their non competitive consumer prices high. and their taxation high so they can fund their socialist nanny state programs, while making the US pay for it all through them selling their goods here tariff free for large profit, the USA subsidizing their whole economy WHILE DEFENDING THEM FOR FREE?. The people of Europe want lower consumer prices. Wait until the People awaken to that fact. BINGO!

[iamgalt]

I don’t l could care less how the world reacts, we’re sick of getting screwed

[Sicon]

Here's How the World Is Reacting to Trump's Tariff Announcement

[GOPJ]

“They do it to us, we do it to them.” The governments of the affected nations aren’t happy about the development, as can be expected. Several have already cried foul, speaking out against the new tariffs.

They long for the old days when democrats made horrible 'trade deals' that damaged the American people but encouraged foreign countries to buy their 'speeches' at $40,000 a minutes.

[curious7]

As the saying goes: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

Corollary: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Weird how nobody in the U.S. far left “media” hates the foreigners who are raping America with THEIR tariffs. Screw the “media”. Don’t be an old fogey geezer. Turn the America-hating far-left “media’ off.

[Vermont Lt]

“They” need tariffs on US products because they tend to be better than locally made.

Tariffs are used to protect the workers in the “home” country.

What you will see, especially when it comes to food products, is a strict adherence to “organic” or “low processing” to protect local products from the US ones. Things like “hormone free” dairy will start showing up. And I guess that is fair to keep standards the same.

I doubt that these countries are going to raise their tariffs higher against us; but I also doubt they will drop them by much.

[Vermont Lt]

I used to work an academic schedule for my job. During the summer I would take a three or four week trip across the country. The last one was a solo motorcycle trip to the southwest.

In prior years I would take one of my daughter’s out west, meet my wife and other daughter, and bring the other daughter on the ride back. They have seen more of this country than any of their friends. Seeing these things led to conversations; which led to history lessons; which led to them developing their values and economic views on their world.

I was very fortunate that I could do that. I’ve been stuck in New England since my wife got sick, and she doesn’t feel comfortable with me taking off for three or four weeks at a time. When she retires I hope to get her hooked on my vagrant travel habits.

[Vermont Lt]

I was thinking about the phrases I used to use in my old “process review” days. The one that has stuck with me is, “Nothing changes unless something changes.”

[Sequoyah101]

With the chainsaw we need to be prepared for a very rough hull with a few holes in it that will need to be patched up. What we are going through right now is more like field repairs than a proper shop overhaul.

It is going to be a rough go for quite awhile and at the end of the day we may end up the same place we would have had noting at all been done. There is a 100% chance things will not end well if nothing is done though.

If the next administration or the one after that change course the failure will be faster even yet.

Sometimes cleaning out a spring to make it run better just drops the water table faster and it dries up sooner.

I am anxiously waiting to see how it goes. I am so late in life I may not see the ending of it.

[central_va]

The reaction is so out of proprtaion. The USA imports $2.7 trillion/yr. The enire world economy (2023 GDP) is $106.17 trillion/yr. So imports to the USA from the rest of the world represents:

2.7 / 106 = 2.5% of world GDP. Peanuts. THIS IS GETTING SILLY.