Posted on 04/03/2025 12:48:50 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a simple three-word response to countries looking to respond to the United States’ broad tariffs: “Do not retaliate.”
President Donald Trump announced on his self-proclaimed “Liberation Day” and declared a 10% tariff on all goods as well as retaliatory tariffs on some of the U.S.’s closest allies that he says are taking advantage of the U.S.
Tariffs of 34% on China, 20% on the EU, 24% on Japan, and 32% on Taiwan are some of the more noticeable ones. Due to an existing 20% tariff, the tariffs on China went up to 54%.
“My advice to every country right now is do not retaliate. Sit back, take it in, let’s see how it goes. Because if you retaliate, there will be escalation. If you don’t retaliate, this is the high-water mark,” Bessent said Wednesday in an interview on “Special Report” shortly after the announcement.
Notably, Mexico, Canada, Russia, and Belarus were not on the list of countries that had to pay tariffs.
Bessent said that the US doesn’t do business with Russia or Belarus because they are under sanctions.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, on the other hand, found that the US traded about $3.5 billion worth of goods with Russia in 2024.
The U.S. sent $526.1 million worth of goods to Russia in 2024, which was 12.3 percent less than in 2023. The U.S. also bought $3.0 billion worth of goods from Russia that year, which was 34.2 percent less than in 2023.
The 10% base tariff was announced by the White House to go into effect on Saturday. The individual, reciprocal tariffs will go into effect on April 9.
“These tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines that the...
(Excerpt) Read more at x.com ...
Right.
Drop YOUR tariffs, regulate your borders with us, accept our deportees, stop trafficking in drugs and people, stop stealing our intellectual property, and all will be good.
Not too much to ask, is it?
What’s to retaliate? The new tariffs are still less than half of how much they are gouging us already.
If tariffs are a good thing then every country should raise tariffs so we can all be rich.
“If tariffs are a good thing then every country should raise tariffs so we can all be rich.”
That is kind of like saying “if one aspirin is good for you swallow an entire bottle.”
The dose is the poison.
How about tariffing their stuff until they drop their tariffs, then we'll drop ours?
Do you object to that, too?
Yup. That's a better answer than Bessent's.
“Do not retaliate.”
as per scott bessent
If tariffs are a good thing then every country should raise tariffs so we can all be rich.That's following the same BS we were told when our industries went global.
Don't worry about those menial jobs. We can all be CEO's now.
That's not how these "reciprocal tariffs" were built. They are based strictly on trade imbalance, not tariffs on US goods. Essentially it's (Exports to USA/Trade Balance)÷ 2. So the only way to reduce these tariffs is to export less to the USA and/or buy more US goods. By setting a baseline tariff of 10%, we ae effectively only penalizing countries with a trade imbalance of greater than 20%. That seems pretty reasonable.
I have, yet another, dumb question:
There’s no surprise the stocks are down on the American tariffs, but why is there a selloff in crypto-currencies?
When it come to crypto currencies, I am ignorant. I never bought into them. The sites I follow for market data seem to have varying opinions on the “why”.
“This is not difficult.”
I agree, though the usual screechy screamers are going into overdrive. I think a little patience will reap $trillions over time. I wonder how much we have lost over the last few decades, or since WWII in some cases.
Good question. Some possibilities: margin calls have forced some investors raise cash, and some of them have sold crypto. Second, crypto captures “excess wealth” and, since the equity markets have apparently lost $2 trillion in value over the last 24 hours, there is less excess value.
“There’s no surprise the stocks are down on the American tariffs, but why is there a selloff in crypto-currencies?”
Surely the crypto experts are all over that, wherever they are.
reciprocal... stop yours and we will stop ours.
Yes, and when does on stop? Why 25%? Why not 200%? Serious question.
Yeah, the issue is the world hates Trump and its good politically to be on the “Orange Man bad” bandwagon. The Liberals in Canada rose 24 points in the polling since Carney took over and is now raising auto tariffs.
You seem to have not seen President Trump’s chart showing how horribly asymmetric tariffs are with the USA on the short end of the stick.
Maybe you missed this: “The highest tariff Canada has imposed on U.S. products is 323.5%. Canada has imposed a 298.5% over-quota tariff on US dairy. Canada’s tariff rates on U.S. goods have rarely climbed this high, thanks to free trade agreements like NAFTA (1994) and its successor, the USMCA (2020), which eliminated most tariffs between the two countries. Before these agreements, tariffs were higher—back in the 1980s, rates on some goods like machinery or textiles could hit 20-30% under the General Tariff, but nothing approached the modern dairy extremes. The butter tariff stands out because of Canada’s aggressive protection of its dairy sector.
So our dairy farmers suffer because Canada is so protective of its dairy industry.
Can you say “We need to level the playing field.”
I knew you could.
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